http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-usa-mis.html

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's conservative former Defense Minister Volker Ruehe has backed American plans for a new missile defense shield and called for Europe to join the controversial project, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Volker Ruehe, who served under Helmut Kohl until Germany's Christian Democrats lost power in 1998, will propose to a party meeting on Sunday that Europe ``actively seize'' on the chance to participate in the U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) project.

The proposal is contained in a paper due to be presented by Ruehe at CDU strategy talks in Mainz, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) said.

The call by Ruehe, a convinced Atlanticist, coincided with a campaign mounted by British Conservatives to back the NMD project advocated by U.S. President-elect George W. Bush.

Quoting from Ruehe's position paper, the FAZ said there was a moral obligation to examine missile defense as a possible replacement for the concept of mutually assured nuclear destruction which prevailed during the Cold War.

``The dialogue over missile defense should be held in a way which does not threaten the cohesion of the NATO alliance,'' it said.

Ruehe's stance contrasted with the skepticism expressed by Germany's center-left government, and in particular by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a leader of the Greens Party and a former peace activist.

Berlin has expressed concern that the missile defense scheme could alienate NATO's European partners, provoke Russia and China and undo the progress achieved in strategic disarmament talks over the past 30 years.

The German government is also worried that NMD, still in its development stages, could turn out to be a hugely expensive failure.