Russian envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said Friday that the latest U.S. proposals on its planned missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic contain strange elements.
He said Russian experts are scrutinizing Washington's proposals brought to Moscow by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this month.
"There is something strange about the U.S. proposals," Rogozin told reporters in Brussels.
He said the Americans proposed that Russians can visit the proposed sites in Poland and the Czech Republic on condition that Moscow would also allow Poles and Czechs to visit missile defense sites in Russia.
"It looks like a joke because we do not create any global defense system," he said.
The Russian sites are purely Russian systems in Russia's own territory. But the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic belong to the United States, he argued.
"In that respect we will speak to the Americans rather than Poles and Czechs," he said.
Rogozin said in no way that Moscow agrees with the U.S. plan to have a missile defense site in the two Eastern European countries. "The plans do not satisfy our requirements in the area of our own security."
Missile defense will be discussed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, when they meet in Russia's summer resort of Sochi on April 6.
Source: Xinhua
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