US drops 5 proposals in missile shield deployment talks with Russia

Moscow, Dec 16 (UNI) The Russian Defence Ministry today claimed that a document sent last month as a follow-up to talks in October on American plans to deploy missile shield in Eastern Europe, has dropped five compromise proposals Washington made then.

The United States offered to make a number of concessions at the October 12 talks in Moscow between the US Secretaries of State and Defence and their Rusian counterparts, who sought a solution to Moscow-Washington dispute over the US plans to deploy elements of missile defence in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia insists that the planned missile shield would threaten its security.

One of the concessions the United States showed willingness to make at October's talks but did not mention in the November 21 document, was that it would not activate interceptor missiles before there was authentic evidence of existence of ballistic missiles threatening Europe, Interfax news agency reported quoting the Ministry.

Others were that the US interceptors would not be placed in silos, they would be dismantled if a missile threat were eliminated, the US would join forces with Russia in checking whether any missiles had been launched in the West Asia or western Asia for missile launches and that Washington and Moscow would make joint decisions on how to react to threats of attack.

November's document put forward new proposals, however, one of them being that US officers be stationed at Russian missile defence facilities, the Russian Defence Ministry stated.

UNI