As Pentagon monitors chart the progress of today's missile test, sceptical eyes will be watching. China, Russia and much of Europe will be hoping for another failure which will finally force the Clinton administration to drop a project they say will start a new arms race.
Beijing has repeatedly told US officials that it sees the system as unnecessarily provocative and one which could shatter the regional balance of power.
Defence Secretary William Cohen is expected to feel the full brunt of China's objections when he arrives in Beijing on Tuesday.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin used the eve of the test to stiffen resistance and take a new high ground on disarmament. In a letter to the mayors of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - history's only victims of nuclear blasts - Mr Putin warned the plan would shatter the basis of arms control pacts between Russia and the United States, chiefly the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
He also pushed the US for more intensive efforts by the two major nuclear powers to reduce stockpiles of warheads.
Meanwhile, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji met Italian counterpart Giuliano Amato in Rome on Thursday. Afterwards, Mr Amato said: 'We had common positions on the ABM treaty and shared the concern that the shield may appear more as a threat than a tool of defence.' Mr Zhu agreed with the Italian premier and said China was 'categorically opposed' to another US plan to build a separate anti-missile shield which Beijing feared would place Taiwan under US protection.
