Washington's proposed missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic are designed to counter the potential missile threat from Iran and will not affect Russian security, a senior defense official said on Thursday.

Henry A. Obering, head of the U.S. Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency, said that although Iran posed no long-range threat to Eastern Europe today, the United States had to "stay ahead of what we think that threat is."

Washington wanted to install up to 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and an advanced radar station in the Czech Republic, he told reporters at a telephone news conference.

As for Moscow's concern over the plan, Obering said any U.S. interceptors in the region would be physically incapable of catching long-range Russian missiles "from the locations that we've outlined in Eastern Europe," adding that the missile defense system "doesn't pose a technical threat to the Russian ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) fleet."

If negotiations on the proposed missile defense system with Poland and the Czech Republic failed, the United States had other options, Obering said.

"There are other options and other alternatives that we could fall back to if the negotiations were to be not successful," he said.

Obering said interceptors and radar could go elsewhere in Europe if necessary, without giving details on any fallbacks.

The fallbacks were being held "in reserve," even though their locations were not optimal for countering the flight paths of potential long-range Iranian missiles, he said.

On Sunday, the U.S. State Department said the Czech Republic and Poland had agreed to start detailed discussions with Washington on hosting part of a U.S.-built shield against ballistic missiles.

Russia has cast doubt over the U.S. plan, saying Moscow did not believe that U.S. missile defense system was needed in Europe.

Russian Defense Minister Sergie Ivanov said on Wednesday that as Iran had no long-range ballistic missiles that could hit Europe, the proposed U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe could not be directed against Iran.

Ivanov suggested that the real target of the anti-missile system was Moscow.

Source: Xinhua