Russia invites US for missile defense talks

MOSCOW

President Putin watches the launch of a missile during naval drill in this photo. REUTERS photo

Russia has invited U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey to Moscow for talks that will include the issue of missile defense, Gen. Valery Gerasimov has said.

“Missile defense will be one of the points of our discussion,” Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told a meeting of foreign military attachés. There has been no comment on the proposed visit from the United States, according to Russian RIANovosti News Agency.

Turkey agreed to allow the U.S. military to install special early-warning radar in 2011 as part of the NATO system. Kremlin sees the system as a threat to Russia’s security.

Gerasimov also noted that Russia and NATO have achieved “good results” in a number of areas of cooperation, although there are still a number of disagreements between the two sides, including the subject of NATO enlargement, building NATO military infrastructure near Russian borders and deployment of a missile defense system in Europe. “We are not challenging NATO’s right to provide a missile defense shield for itself, but cannot agree that this should be done at the expense of Russia’s deterrent capability,” he said.