PRESS RELEASE

Rogozin Urges Putin To Place
Asteroid Defense on G-20 Agenda

April 12, 2013 (EIRNS)—In a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Dimitri Rogozin urged that the "Strategic Defense of the Earth" be placed high on the agenda of the upcoming G20 meeting in September. Russia is presently chairing the G20, which will hold its next summit September 8-9 in St. Petersburg.

In the letter, "leaked" to the newspaper Izvestiya, Rogozin wrote,

"The scale of the task of neutralizing the asteroid threat requires the concentration of global intellectual resources and the scientific potential of Russia, the United States, and other countries of the world... Such a program of cooperation will increase trust between the nations and at the same time create the conditions for ending the confrontation over the missile defense program."

To conduct such a program, Rogozin is calling for the creation of a new structure under the auspices of the United Nations, which Rogozin calls a "space IAEA."

Rogozin calls this "the project to save civilization from threats in space."

In October 2011, Rogozin, then Russian ambassador to NATO, first proposed a Strategic Defense of Earth, in the context of resolving the conflict between the U.S. and Russia over NATO's missile defense program. He reiterated the proposal in the immediate wake of the Chelyabinsk meteor incident in February. As far as is known, the U.S. Administration has yet to respond.