Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was scheduled to meet with his German counterpart Thomas de Maiziere on Thursday to discuss a controversial NATO plan to station anti-missile systems in East Europe, according to dpa. The talks came in the wake of a Tuesday agreement between the US and Romania to deploy Aegis missiles to the East European nation, as part of a wider Washington strategy to increase missile intercept capacity around the Middle East. Russia is sharply at odds with NATO over a US initiative to field a missile defence network in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against a missile attack from the south. US and NATO officials have said growing missile capacity in Middle Eastern nations, particularly Iran, make a defence system in East Europe necessary. A missile defence system positioned on Russia's western frontier would give Brussels and Washington the ability to shoot down Russian missiles while, at present, no Middle Eastern nation possesses missiles capable of reaching Europe, Russian officials have said. NATO would obtain a possibly decisive advantage in a potential confrontation with Moscow, they have said. Russia has threatened to deploy nuclear weapons to its enclave Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania, and to return conventional forces in western Belarus to Cold War strengths, if NATO goes forward with the missile defence plan. Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin in Wednesday evening comments to Interfax called the US-Romania agreement "an attempt by the US to force NATO's hand ... about which we can only be greatly concerned."
