U.S. seeks "full partnership" with Russia on missiles

U.S. Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, director of the Pentagon Missile Defense Agency, speaks during an interview in Washington July 9, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is seeking "full partnership" with Moscow to bridge ballistic missile-defense differences that have strained U.S.-Russian ties for years, the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said Thursday.

He made the comments as President Barack Obama works with Moscow to cut nuclear weapons and weighs whether to go ahead with Bush-era plans to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and an advanced radar station in the Czech Republic -- plans strongly opposed by Moscow.

"The (new) approach is to lay out ideas, and not to have a fully developed plan," Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly told a group of Reuters editors and reporters, referring to missile defense discussions with Russia.

"You need to move forward at a prudent pace so that there are collaborative decisions, intermediate decisions made along the way, so that there is true partnership," he said.

Obama, during a two-day visit to Russia this week, called for a fresh era in bilateral security ties focusing on mutual interests. He and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev agreed to pursue a plan, first floated in the 1990s, to open a joint early-warning center to monitor missile launches worldwide.

O'Reilly said he had not received any orders "to deviate" from expanding U.S. missile defenses into Poland and the Czech Republic, an idea Moscow calls a threat to Russian security.

The initiative for these sites was put forward by former President George W. Bush. Congress has said construction of the sites may not begin until those countries' parliaments have ratified their pacts on the projects with Washington.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Andrew Gray and Mari Saito; editing by Eric Beech)