UPDATE 2-Czechs say missile shield talks with Russia needed

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By Louis Charbonneau

Germany and the Czech Republic agree the United States should hold further talks with Russia on its plans to install a missile shield in central Europe, 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 that would counter missiles fired by what Washington calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.

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.

"We are in agreement to ask the Americans to have more intensive talks with the Russians," Vondra said after talks in Berlin with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

"We should keep them informed," Vondra said of the Russians, while noting his country should not have to ask Moscow for permission to put the shield on its territory.

Both Vondra and Ruprecht Polenz, the head of the foreign affairs committee of the German parliament, called for discussions on the anti-missile shield within the NATO alliance.

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

The debate over the shield has strained relations between Washington and Moscow. In a speech at the security conference in Munich earlier this month Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. government of imposing its will on the world with dangerous policies.

U.S. officials say the shield will not pose any threat to Russia but is designed to counter potential missiles fired from North Korea or Iran.

"There's no way 10 interceptors based in eastern Europe can challenge the hundreds of missiles and the thousands of warheads that the Russians have," the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, said.

"It's not the Russians we're worried about. It's the Iranians we are worried about," he told a missile defence conference in London hosted by the Royal United Services Institute, a British defence think-tank.

Western powers are locked in a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programme. Tehran says the programme is peaceful but the West suspects the country is pursuing nuclear bombs.

Separately on Tuesday, 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.

Steinmeier said he discussed it last week with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"The discussion should, as much as possible, take place without the typical anti-American or anti-Russia reflexes in the public," he said, adding the Americans had made it clear they would continue discussing the issue with Russia. (Additional reporting by Cornelia Krause, and Adrian Croft in London) ((Editing by Alison Williams; Berlin newsroom, +49 30 2888 5085))

Keywords: CZECH MISSILE/GERMANY

[BERLIN/Reuters/Finance.cz]