Nothing new in U.S. missile defense proposal: Russia

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's military on Wednesday waved aside as nothing new a fresh U.S. proposal for a plan to station part of a missile defense shield in eastern Europe.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on a visit to Moscow last week, handed over the new proposals including letting Russia inspect elements of the missile shield.

"As head of the General Staff and an expert from the Russian side, I saw nothing novel in these proposals," Interfax news agency quoted chief of staff Yuri Baluyevsky as saying.

Last week the Russians had asked for more time for their experts to study the proposals.

"What novelty there was could be wrapped up by saying our radars in Qabala and Armenia were supposed to become an addition to their anti-missile defense system," said Baluyevsky.

In Brussels, U.S. officials said at NATO headquarters that Washington proposed sharing radar data with Russia to defend against Iranian missiles during the visit by Rice and Gates.

Lieutenant-General Henry Obering, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said the Russians confirmed at a meeting with NATO on Wednesday that they were still studying the proposals "because they did represent new ideas and concepts".

"It is a major step ahead from our perspective in terms of showing even more willingness to cooperate and even more willingness to be inclusive of our Russian allies," he said.

"If you actually tie it to where you could get radar data all the way through from one U.S. radar, for example, or European radar, into the Russian system and vice versa, that's when you get this expansion of capability."

U.S. plans to build part of the shield in Poland and the Czech Republic have angered Moscow which says the missiles are a threat. Washington says the shield is to stop "rogue states" such as Iran launching missile attacks.

Russia has offered bases in former Soviet states in the Caucasus as an alternative to building new equipment in eastern Europe, but the United States says the Soviet stations could be used only alongside the proposed sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Iranian media that the United States had shifted its position positively to enable further dialogue.

One of the nations that the United States is most concerned about is Iran, which it accuses of building a nuclear weapon.

But Baluyevsky said he saw no evidence that Iran would have the capability to launch such long-range attacks any time soon.

"We do not see that this could be done in the short and medium term, or that it could be done at all," he was quoted as saying.

Putin said last week Russia could pull out of a U.S.-Russian Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty unless it was expanded to impose restrictions on other countries' arsenals as well.