The United States is offering Russia a new package of incentives to drop its strong opposition to American missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, including an invitation to begin linking some American and Russian antimissile systems, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The package includes American offers to cooperate on developing defense technology and to share intelligence about common threats, as well as to permit Russian officials to inspect the future missile bases, unidentified U.S. officials were quoted as saying.

The initiatives include offers that are "deeper, more specific and concrete" than any previous proposal for cooperation from the Bush administration to the Kremlin, said one senior official involved in planning the talks with the Russians.

In military terms, the U.S. initiative to the Russians on missile defense will include an invitation "toward fundamental integration of our systems," said a senior military officer involved in the discussions.

This concept of linking some American and Russian military systems for common missile defense would be at a level that exists in no other area of U.S. Russia military relations.

The offers of cooperation will be laid out for Russian officials in the coming weeks in a series of high-level meetings being scheduled by senior American officials, in particular Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

If these talks go well, they will continue over the summer and fall between U.S. President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the newspaper said.

The United States plans to deploy a missile defense radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland. The operation is going to start in 2011.

Russia firmly opposes the plan and says the proposed plan will threaten peace in Europe, while the United States insists that the plan is not aimed at Russia and will only serve as a precaution for a possible attack from Iran.

Russian officials said 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. They suggest that the real target of the anti-missile system is Moscow.

Source: Xinhua