UPDATE 1-Czechs want missile shield talks with NATO, Germany

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By Louis Charbonneau

The Czech Republic intends to consult both Germany and NATO on plans for a U.S. missile shield, a project that has infuriated Russia, Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra said on Tuesday.

The United States wants to set up a radar system in the Czech Republic and a missile battery in Poland as part of a shield against missiles fired by what Washington calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.

"I informed the minister that we want to discuss the issue with Germany and within the NATO alliance," Vondra said after meeting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "I expect that this will go beyond what the United States has done so far," he told reporters.

Separately, the head of the foreign affairs committee of the German parliament said there should not be different security zones within NATO and urged a broader discussion within the alliance of the missile shield.

"We should talk about a missile defence system for the entire alliance," Ruprecht Polenz, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), told reporters in Berlin.

"Talks within the alliance, not bilateral talks between the USA and individual states, would be the way forward."

Moscow sees the system as an encroachment on its former sphere of influence and an attempt to shift the post-Cold War balance of power. Germany has criticised the project's planners for failing to discuss it sufficiently with Russia.

Vondra reiterated the Czech position that the project was in no way aimed at Russia.

"The goal is protection against other threats coming from the Middle East," he said, clearly referring to Iran, which the United States and the European Union fear is developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme -- a charge Tehran denies.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich was quoted by a German newspaper as saying the shield should have been discussed with Kiev as well as Moscow.

"Only once there has been a comprehensive European debate, a dialogue between western and eastern Europe, can such a decision be made," he told the business daily Handelsblatt.

"Europe must not be split again like it was before the Iraq war," Yanukovich said in the paper's Tuesday edition.

Steinmeier said he had discussed the issue last week with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who had made clear they would continue discussing the issue with Russia. ((Editing by Tim Pearce; Berlin newsroom, +49 30 2888 5085))

Keywords: CZECH MISSILE/GERMANY

[BERLIN/Reuters/Finance.cz]