Russia Offers Plan for European Missile Defense

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin presented a plan for a European missile defense program to NATO Secretary-General George Robertson on Tuesday, warning that chances of a renewed Cold War and a new arms race are growing.

Putin told the visiting Robertson that despite the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s rhetoric, the alliance’s actions seem to treat Russia as an enemy. And under those circumstances, Russia must take steps to defend itself.

Putin first proposed a European missile defense last summer. Most of Washington’s European allies oppose a U.S. plan to build a missile defense shield, and Russia is eager to exploit this difference of opinion within NATO. Increasingly, Russia has been emphasizing its warm relations with Europe and turning a cold shoulder to Washington.

“The expansion of [NATO] toward our borders can’t be interpreted in any other way except [as a response to] a threat coming from Russia,” Putin said in remarks broadcast on national television. “We are concerned with other statements by other Western politicians . . . who are trying to restore the image of Russia as some kind of evil empire that is threatening--although no one is scared.”

The Russian leader’s comments came as a new spy scandal in Washington underscored the continuing strain in relations between Russia and the United States and at a time when statements from the new Bush administration have only heightened Moscow’s concerns.

“There is a huge and ever-growing gap of mistrust between Russia and America as far as issues of nuclear technologies are concerned,” said Dmitri V. Trenin, a military analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “And this mistrust is mutual.”

Details of Putin’s missile defense proposal were not released, but it appears designed to identify individual countries that pose a nuclear threat and then to develop systems to block missiles launched from those locations.

Col. Gen. Leonid G. Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry’s international cooperation section, said the plan involves three stages: threat assessment, conceptual development and technology development.

“These elements will be mobile and will be deployed in the directions of the greatest risk of missiles to cover the most important objects,” Ivashov said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Ivan Safranchuk, an arms control expert at the Center for Policy Studies, a Moscow think tank, said the Russian proposal is more diplomatic than technological. Russia has antiaircraft systems that can also be used to target incoming missiles, but those systems would not be enough to build a comprehensive missile shield, Safranchuk said.

“Apart from that, Russia can offer nothing except a magic wand, if it has one,” he said.

Russia froze relations with NATO in 1999 after the alliance began bombing Yugoslavia. The Kremlin also expelled two NATO officials from their Moscow office. Relations have thawed slowly since, and NATO’s office here reopened just this week. Robertson was in town for the ceremony.

Robertson said he told Putin that the alliance will not split over missile defense. But the NATO chief also said it is only fair to permit Russia to consider reciprocal measures.

“I made it clear that the NATO allies accept that the United States has made its decision to have an effective missile defense,” Robertson said. “But what is important now is that we now have a Russian proposal to deal with the same kind of perceived threat.”