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US reassures Poles on Russia missile defence role

by (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Click For Restrictions. http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 11 February 2011 14:54 GMT

* US arms official reassures Poles over missile shield plans

* Signals for cooperation with Russia "very good"

WARSAW, Feb 11 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. arms control negotiator said on Friday she had reassured Poland and the Baltic republics that plans to involve Russia in developing European missile defence would not compromise their security.

U.S. President Barack Obama has scrapped Bush-era plans for radar and interceptor missiles in eastern Europe that Moscow saw as a threat to its own security and has invited Russia to join a revised blueprint that involves shorter-range interceptors.

Russia has cautiously accepted the offer but says it must have significant input, raising concerns among ex-Soviet satellites such as Poland, now NATO members, that Moscow may have a de facto veto over the development of missile defence.

"I have really stressed in my talks that the guiding principle, as set out by President Obama in Lisbon, is that NATO protects NATO," Rose Gottemoeller, assistant secretary of state for arms control, told reporters after meeting Polish officials.

"We have resolved, and NATO has resolved, to develop robust cooperation with Russia on missile defence... There is a will in all NATO capitals to make this work," said Gottemoeller, who has also visited Ukraine and NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the past few days.

"The signals (from Russia) are very good," she added, citing discussions between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Munich last weekend.

In Munich, the United States and Russia formally inaugurated their new START nuclear arms treaty that caps two years of work to "reset" relations strained by the disagreements over missile defence and other issues. [ID:nN05115909]

Poland has been pursuing its own "reset" in long-chilly ties with Russia but is sensitive to any sign that Washington may concede too much to Moscow, whose support Obama needs on issues such as Iran and Afghanistan.

At a NATO summit last November, the allies agreed to develop a new missile defence shield linking systems in the United States and Europe to protect member states against long-range attacks from regions such as the Middle East.

The plans involve the stationing of ship-based interceptors in the Mediterranean from this year, followed by land-based interceptors in Romania from 2015 and in Poland from 2018.

Despite its agreement to take part in the initiative, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said Russia could deploy nuclear weapons and "strike forces" if it were shut out of the Western missile shield. (Reporting by Gareth Jones, editing by Paul Taylor)

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