SOFA agreement to be concluded within days

The Status of Forces agreement setting the conditions under which US soldiers would operate a planned US radar base on Czech soil should be ready by the end of next week, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said in an interview for Czech public television on Sunday. An agreement on the siting of a US tracking radar on Czech territory was signed by Washington and Prague in July, leaving the two sides to conclude the so-called SOFA deal on the status of an estimated 250 US soldiers who would man the base. The tracking radar in the Czech Republic and ten interceptor rockets in neighboring Poland are to form the European part of a global system Washington says it is assembling to shoot down ballistic missiles it fears could be launched by "rogue" states or militant groups such as al-Qaeda. Although both the Czech and Polish governments have signed agreements with the United States on missile defense the deals still need to be approved by the two countries’ parliaments.