Russia ups the ante - offers Europe integrated global missile shield

Moscow: Russia on Sunday offered a global integrated missile shield for the protection of the whole of Europe as an alternative to the US National Missile Defence (NMD).

Proposing the shield, Russia's first deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, said Moscow's proposal would include both the United States and European countries, including neutral ones such as Austria, Finland and Sweden.

Interestingly, he also said that all participating countries in the programme would have equal access to the system's control. "We are proposing to create a single missile defence system for all participants with equal access to the system's control," Ivanov said on the state-run Rossia channel.

According to Ivanov, the Russian proposal would involve creating missile defence data exchange centres in Moscow and Brussels, headquarters of NATO and the European Union. Ivanov also did not rule out the sharing by Russia of some of its "highly sensitive" technologies with the West as part of creating the new integrated system, in order to generate trust in thwarting rouge missile threats.

Ivanov also referred to Putin's proposals to the US for the joint use of Soviet early warning Qabala radar in Azerbaijan, if Washington gave up its plans to deploy elements of its European missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.