Putin says US missile defence plans 'unjustified'

President Vladimir Putin today emphasised Moscow’s opposition to the planned US deployment of missile defence systems in central Europe and said Russia would take measures in response.

Mr Putin repeated his rejection of US insistence that the interceptor missiles and radar systems Washington wants to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic was aimed at neutralising a potential treat from Iran, saying no such threat existed or was likely to anytime soon.

Moscow had argued that the US was trying to target Russia’s strategic missile arsenal.

Mr Putin made the remarks after meeting with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who said: “I strove to explain to President Putin that from the Czech side this plan was not directed against the Russian Federation.”

But Mr Putin said: “These systems will control Russian territory up to the Urals – if, of course, we do not take action in response, and we will”.

The Ural Mountains divide European Russia from its Asian section. Putin equated the planned missile defence system with the deployment of US missiles in Europe during the Cold War and said it would “cardinally change the security system in Europe”.

Russia has repeatedly and vocally criticised the US plan. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates travelled to Moscow this week in an attempt to ease Moscow’s concerns, but Russian officials have continued to lash out over the issue.

Mr Putin said Russia was ready to invite “specialists from Poland, the Czech Republic or other countries to prove to them with the very simplest documents that neither terrorists … nor Iran nor North Korea” has missiles that would require such a defence system.“

“We see no argument at all for the deployment of missile defence systems in Europe, there is no basis for it,” he said.

“Iran ... does not have such (missile) systems and they are not foreseen,” he said. “As for terrorists – this is just laughable; they use different methods.”