Russia scraps European missile plan

Moscow reacts to President Obama's announcement that US shield plans in Europe were being shelved.

Russia has scrapped plans to site missiles on the European Union's border after President Barack Obama shelved controversial US shield plans in Europe, a deputy defence minister said. "Those countermeasures, which Russia had planned in response to the deployment of US missile shield elements in Europe, will be scrapped," Vladimir Popovkin told Echo of Moscow radio. "One of those measures was the deployment of Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad," he said.

Russia had fiercely opposed the US plan, promoted by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, to place a radar facility in the Czech Republic and interceptor rockets in Poland. A Kremlin source said on Friday Russia would be compelled to offer compromises in response to the US policy change, amid speculation such responses could include a tougher stance on Iran's contentious nuclear programme. The move to drop threats to deploy short range Iskander missiles in Russia's European exclave of Kaliningrad, announced by a Russian military source on Friday, was Moscow's first concrete response to the US decision.

The initial plan for the Iskander systems near NATO-member state Poland was a "political one" angled at irritating the Western military bloc, Mr Popovkin admitted. "We know that Kaliningrad is surrounded by NATO member states and that, of course, Iskander missiles there would provoke negative reactions from the bloc," he told the radio. The Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin hailed as "correct and brave" Mr Obama's decision to abandon the Star Wars defence shield and voiced hope that it would lead to better US-Russian ties.

Those ties between have been slowly recovering since Mr Obama took over at the White House, promising a "reset" in relations between Moscow and the West. Mr Obama is to meet with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. So far Moscow has resisted US calls for tougher UN sanctions against Tehran, which the West suspects of working to develop an atomic bomb, and Mr Medvedev denied cutting any "crude" behind-the-scenes deals over the US shield.

Washington, meanwhile, said its decision was based on updated intelligence, and it would replace the Bush-era plan with a sea-based system to focus on the threat of short- and medium-range missiles from Iran. *AFP