A high-level Pentagon team met British counterparts at the Ministry of Defence to urge their co-operation in developing a system that would give all Nato allies protection against rogue states with weapons of mass destruction.

The American team’s arrival in London came just five weeks after the scrapping of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty made such an offer possible and was the first stop on a European tour that will take it to every Nato capital.

Under America’s new vision, Britain and other allies could deploy anti-ballistic missile systems on warships, or agree to have ground-based interceptors on their territory. Germany, The Netherlands and Spain, who are collaborating on a new frigate, are already considering making room for a shipborne interceptor.

The national missile shield espoused by President Bush was previously perceived as a system to protect only the US from rogue missile attack. America had been accused of being “isolationist” in its approach to missile defence.

A senior member of the US team told The Times that the scrapping of the ABM Treaty now made it possible to involve all America’s allies. Russia was also keen to cooperate, he said.

The two signatories to the treaty, the US and Russia, were prohibited from passing to allies any technology related to defence against long-range ballistic missiles. “With the treaty passing away, we have the opportunity to explore the possibility of cooperating with our Nato allies collectively,” the official said.

Freed of the restrictions imposed by the treaty, the Pentagon was pressing ahead “aggressively” with research on a range of different technologies to ensure that a limited system could be in place before rogue states such as Iraq, Iran or North Korea can acquire long-range ballistic missiles armed with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

The official said that the whole focus of the missile defence programme had changed and it was hoped that Britain and other countries would want to contribute to a system that would offer global protection. He denied that the new approach bore any resemblance to the grand vision of a space-based missile shield that had been the dream of President Reagan — the so-called Star Wars plan. That concept was about defending the US against thousands of nuclear missiles from the Soviet Union.

The new global missile defence proposal was limited to defending against rogue states armed with small numbers of long-range weapons.

However, one of the “left-over” Star Wars concepts — space-based laser weapons — was being viewed as among the most promising technologies for hitting an enemy missile at its boost phase, immediately after launch — except that the proposed system is to be fitted to a Boeing 747.

The team from the Pentagon is travelling next to Oslo, then Copenhagen, Berlin and Prague. Another delegation is visiting Warsaw, Budapest, Rome and Paris. Discussions with Moscow are also under way. Russia carried out its own laser programme, which could be offered as part of the proposed global network.

The senior US official said what was planned was “a system of systems”, which would be capable of defending against any type of attack.

“We used to talk about long-range missile defence and theatre-missile defence, but now it’s all being brought under the same heading,” another senior US official said.