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BERLIN, May 9: Moscow will not allow a dispute over US plans to build a missile shield in central Europe to harm its relations with the European Union, Russia's foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Washington has enraged Russia and unsettled some European allies with a plan to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar systems in the Czech Republic which it says would protect Europe from any missile attack by nations such as Iran.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov adopted an unusually conciliatory tone in a speech broadcast by video link from Moscow during a conference at the German foreign ministry.
“We will not allow us to be put at odds with the Europeans and we'll continue to develop our relations with them,” Lavrov said. Clearly referring to the US view of the threat posed by Iranian missiles, he said: “We will not succumb to hysteria.”
Nor does Moscow want to fight with the Americans, he added.
“We strongly reject confrontation with the United States and we'll continue our dialogue and expand cooperation where our interests coincide, while frankly explaining the inadmissibility of unilateral destabilising actions,” Lavrov said.
Russia has suggested the missile shield is not aimed at Iran or North Korea but at Russia. It has also said the United States could use the system to spy on Russia and that eventually offensive missiles could be deployed in the Polish silos.
In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde published on Wednesday, US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Russian fears were unjustified as the project was purely defensive and could not be modified to launch attack missiles.
“We have listened to them but they have been so intransigent in their position that most NATO allies now support our proposal,” Burns was quoted as saying.
The two men's comments come days before a planned visit to Moscow by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on May 14 and 15 where she is expected to seek to ease tension with Russia over the missile shield, Kosovo and other issues.
A GRAVE MISTAKE: In his strongest remarks to date, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was quoted as saying on Wednesday that the United States had made a “grave mistake” by not consulting widely enough on the missile shield plan.
“This decision will create much nervousness,” Fico told Austrian newspaper Die Presse when asked why he had called the missile shield a danger.
“We need stability, not nervousness. It was a grave mistake that the United States didn't discuss this issue properly, neither with the European Union nor in NATO, nor with Russia,”
Fico added, according to the interview.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds the EU presidency, said on Wednesday the bloc could mediate between Russia and the U.S. over the shield.
Speaking at the Berlin conference, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he and Merkel urged US President George W. Bush during a recent visit to Washington to try harder to explain to the Russians that they have nothing to fear from the shield.—Reuters
