By David Williams

NATO leaders will launch a new Europe-wide ballistic missile shield at a Lisbon summit but will not openly identify Iran as a threat so as to win over Turkey, officials said Thursday.

US President Barack Obama and supporters of the shield want to wrap up broad agreement at the Friday-Saturday summit on a missile umbrella stretching across European members of the 28-nation alliance.
Turkey is mindful of its delicate position with neighbouring Iran, however, and has said it will refuse to sign up to a NATO document that names Iran as the threat in the final declaration.

Diplomats said there had been intense debate in the run-up to the summit about whether Iran should be targetted as a specific menace in the public document they adopt.

On the eve of the tightly secured Lisbon talks, however, an official at French Elysee presidential office in Paris told reporters that Iran will not figure as a missile threat in the public declaration.

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