A day after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates visited Moscow to invite Russia to join as a partner in a planned US missile-defence shield, a Russian official said the shield was directed at Russia and could become a target for Russian missiles, DPA reported. "The concrete, true goal (of the shield) ... is the creation of defence against the nuclear potential of Russia and China," Yury Baluyevsky, head of Russia's Armed Forces General Staff, said at a Moscow press conference. Baluyevsky's remarks came after the Bush administration dispatched Gates to invite Russia, the shield's most vociferous opponent, to cooperate. Moscow has also taken special issue with Washington's decision to put elements of the shield in former Soviet satellite states Poland and the Czech Republic, not far from Russian territory. After speaking with Russia's defence minister, first deputy prime minister and President Vladimir Putin, Gates called the meetings "excellent" and said "real headway" was made in opening dialogue with Moscow and allaying "misunderstandings." On Tuesday, however, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said at the conference that any possible shield would be a "serious annoyance in our strategic relations for years ahead," Interfax reported. Kislyak noted, though, that US-Russian relations were "better than the press writes but worse than they could be." Baluyevsky, the General Staff head, appealed to Europeans, saying they would "pay" for the US shield and become "hostages of a different game, of the United States' game." He added the shield's elements could become targets of Russian forces - "strategic, nuclear or other - it is, as they say, a technical question." Russia, he said, was able to create anti-aircraft and anti-missile defences superior to any that exist, "including the United States', and I am ready to prove that." Yet while arguing the shield would be directed at Russia, Baluyevsky also said Russia would be able in the near future to build arms that could circumvent the shield. "That means missiles that fly not along a raised trajectory, like all ballistic missiles, but along an unpredictable trajectory," he added.
