July 09, 2008	Wednesday	Rajab 5, 1429

MOSCOW, July 8: Russia has threatened to react with “military resources” if a US anti-missile shield is set up near its borders, according to a foreign ministry statement.

“If a US strategic anti-missile shield is deployed near our borders, we will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military resources,” the Tuesday statement said.

“There is no doubt that the grouping of elements of the strategic US arsenal faced towards Russian territory” could lead Moscow to “take adequate measures to face the threats to its national security,” it added.

The statement came in the wake of the signing of a deal in Prague earlier in the day under permitting Washington to base a tracking radar station on Czech soil.

The United States wants the radar twinned with interceptor missiles in neighbouring Poland, although negotiations with Warsaw have become bogged down with Polish demands for additional security guarantees.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday clashed with US President George Bush over missile defence at their first face-to-face meeting, during the G8 summit in Japan.

“There are topics on which we are making progress, such as Iran and North Korea, there are topics on which we diverge, such as the missile shield and European matters, but there are possibilities for agreement,” Medvedev said.

Russia is opposed to having the US missile shield on its doorstep.

Analysts say the Russians fear not only a potential long-term threat to their own nuclear deterrent and the security of their airspace, but also associate the shield with Nato’s prospective enlargement to include the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia.

NATO endorsed the US missile defence plan at its April summit in Bucharest.

The United States has suggested that Russian inspectors could visit the anti-missile sites, as long as Prague and Warsaw agreed.

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in February, when he was still president, that Moscow would point its missiles towards Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic if the Nato enlargement or the proposed US missile shield got under way.

—AFP