The United States failed on Thursday to convince Russia on Washington's plan to deploy missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe.

"I cannot conclude that we agree on everything. There is a difference in threat perception (between NATO and Russia)," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after a meeting between NATO allies and Russia.

He said the NATO allies are convinced that the U.S. deployment will not have implications on strategic balance.

Ten interceptors planned for deployment in Poland do not pose a threat to Russia, he said.

But Russian ambassador to NATO, Konstantin Totskiy, could not agree.

"I would like to underscore that possible deployment of U.S. missile defense site in Europe is not something pleasant to us," Totskiy told a separate press conference.

"We are against the fact that such decisions are taken just unilaterally."

But he added that Russia will not be engaged in an arms race with the United States as its predecessor, the Soviet Union, did in the Cold War.

Russia would rather develop a cheaper "asymmetrical answer" to possible threats posed by the U.S. deployment, said the ambassador.

Totskiy said Russian and American experts hold different views on missile threats to Europe.

The two sides diverge on how soon the threats will come and the scale of them, he said. They also differ on the missile capability of Iran, which the United States has named as a possible source of threat.

Moscow has also concerns that the United States may increase the number of interceptor missiles in the future.

Russia's proposal in this context is to use diplomatic and political measures to prevent certain countries to have so many missiles, he said.

The United States is negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic for the deployment of interceptor missiles and a radar tracking system in the two countries respectively.

Washington says the system would be able to help most of its European allies fend off long-range missile attacks.

Director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, and chief of the U.S. State Department's non-proliferation bureau, John Rood, presented the U.S. plans to its NATO allies and Russia.

Washington's efforts seemed to be more successful on its European allies than on Moscow.

De Hoop Scheffer said there was a "shared desire" among NATO allies that the U.S. system should be complementary to a NATO system, potentially its theater missile defense (TMD) shield.

With the U.S. shield in Europe, which can cover most of the territories of the European allies, NATO will not need to develop a system of its own against ballistic missiles, he said.

For those countries out of the protection area of the U.S. shield, the NATO TMD plugged into the American system can offer protection from short- and medium-range threats.

NATO's TMD is expected to have initial capability by 2010/11 and full operational capability by 2015.

Source: Xinhua