RUSSIA:Russia's president Vladimir Putin warned that Europe would be turned into a powder keg if the US went ahead with plans to "stuff" the continent with new weapons such as the proposed missile defence shield.
Raising fears once again of a new cold war developing between the former foes in Washington and Moscow, the Russian leader's remarks coincided with the successful test of a sophisticated new multi-headed missile across Siberia.
"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to stuff it with new weapons," said Mr Putin. Despite recent agreements to tone down the rhetoric from both sides, Mr Putin dismissed the logic of installing the system in Poland and the Czech Republic, which are close allies to Washington.
"It creates new and unnecessary risks for the whole system of international and European relations," he said, after meeting the Portuguese prime minister, José Socrates, in the Kremlin in advance of his country's taking the EU presidency, which starts in July.
The new missile, the RS-24, can evade missile defence systems, boasted one military chief on Russian television. Equipped with up to 10 independent warheads, the Russian top brass believes that these are much more difficult to intercept than the earlier generation of comparable weapons.
The new missile appears to be the promised high-tech weapon, which Mr Putin first alluded to in February of this year. It forms a key part of the promised upgrade to Russia's arsenal, which dates from the 1980s or even earlier.
The Bush administration has already started talks to place 10 interceptor missiles and a radar base in Europe, despite resistance from many European countries and Russia.
It believes these could knock out, in flight, a supersonic missile, although the technology is still being developed.
The US rejects claims that the missiles would upset the current military balance between Nato and Russia.
Senior Bush aides such as secretary of state Condoleezza Rice dismiss as "nonsense" the Kremlin claims that Russia is the real target for the missile shield, arguing that just 10 defensive weapons could do little to block the vast Russian armoury.
However, scepticism across Europe about the US plans appears to be growing, with the leader of the Socialist Party in the European Parliament, Martin Schultz, dismissing the US plans as "complete nonsense".
In Moscow for talks to establish links with the pro-Kremlin, left-of-centre Just Russia party, he scoffed at the American justification for the plan.
He stressed that although his party, which has almost 220 MEPs, had reached the same conclusion as the Kremlin, they had done so independently of it.
"I was able to understand the Russian feelings about this, because it is complete nonsense. It's our common evaluation of the situation," he said.
Other members of the Socialist delegation said the issue was raised during a meeting with Mr Putin's key European adviser, Sergei Yastrzhembsky. He told them that if the US was serious about tackling the threat from countries such as Iran, then it should be siting the missile shield in Turkey, not in northern European countries such as Poland. The US was intent on creating a split within Europe between those in favour and against the shield, he said.
Another Putin ally, the hawkish first deputy prime minister and former defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, also raised the possibility of Russia revoking another defence treaty yesterday.
Just weeks after Russia announced a moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, because of the alleged non-compliance of Nato, Mr Ivanov warned that the Soviet-era agreement on intermediate weapons was "not effective".