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Russia to take measures against US missile shield

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-27 23:47

MOSCOW - Russia is concerned over US plans to deploy a third missile defense site in Europe and will take asymmetric countermeasures in response, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

"These plans have an explicitly anti-Russian potential," Lt. General Yevgeny Buzhinsky, deputy chief of the ministry's international cooperation department, was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

"We are in the process of considering asymmetric measures, there are some already, but I am unable to say right away what they would be like," Buzhinsky said, adding that the measures would aim to reduce any military threat to Russia.

The United States plans to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the neighboring Czech Republic. Russia is fiercely opposed to the idea, regarding it as part of a global US missile defense system.

"It will be difficult for us to control how many interceptor rockets and of what scale will be deployed in Europe, because the capabilities of missile silos allow for the use of missiles of other types, too," Buzhinsky said.

The general also warned that Russia would cancel its proposal for the joint use of radar stations in south Russia and Azerbaijan if the US insisted on deploying its missile shield in central Europe.