Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus are to discuss the planned deployment of the U.S. anti-missile defense system in the Czech Republic, which has sparked disputes between two Cold War rivals.

Putin and Klaus are scheduled to meet in Moscow on Friday and "will discuss the entire range of bilateral and multilateral problems of mutual interest," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak as saying on Tuesday.

Washington in January proposed installing parts of its missile defense shield in central Europe, including 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Brdy military grounds southwest of Prague in the Czech Republic. The 3.5 billion-U.S. dollar project is set to begin operations by 2011.

The Czech government officially agreed last month to start negotiations with the United States in mid-May over the location of the radar base.

Washington said that the system would not target Russia and offered to share information and technology to ease Russia's worries.

Russia, however, insisted that the real target will not be Iran as the United States has claimed but Moscow.

U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates' visit to Moscow this week also did not gain a green light from President Putin and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

"We consider that the U.S. strategic missile defense system is a destabilizing factor that may considerably affect regional and global security," Serdyukov said after talks with Gates on Monday.

The United States would install the radar system in some other country if the Czech Republic did not want it on its soil, said Henry A. Obering, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, on Monday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said on Tuesday that those U.S. elements in Europe will be "a significant irritant in Russian-U.S. strategic relations for years to come," the Interfax news agency reported.

Also on Tuesday, Chief of the Russian General Staff Yury Baluyevsky threatened that the U.S. system will possibly be targets of Russia forces, Interfax reported.

"If we see that the facilities pose a threat to Russia's security, the facilities will be objects for plans of our forces." he told a press conference.

Source: Xinhua