http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/06/12/timfgnrus01001.html

PRESIDENT PUTIN warned Britain yesterday not to co-operate with the United States in setting up a new anti-missile defence, stressing the price could be "very high".

The broadside came before a trip this week to Berlin in which the Russian leader is determined to deepen the divisions between Europe and the United States on the controversial nuclear defence plan. In an interview with a German newspaper, he made plain that he - like other Kremlin residents before him - sees Germany as the weak link in the alliance, potentially the most responsive to Moscow's special pleading.

"The shape of Europe in the 21st century will depend to a great deal on the co-operation between our two countries," he said. "Washington cannot realise its plans alone. It needs European help, above all from Britain, Denmark and Norway. These states risk being drawn into a process that will lead to an unpredictable destruction of strategic stability. The price could be very high," Mr Putin said.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, has already expressed reservations about the new anti-ballistic missile defence, aimed at guarding the United States against nuclear strikes from so-called "rogue" nations. He said tinkering with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 could trigger a new arms race.

Mr Putin took up the theme, saying that abolishing or undermining the ABM Treaty would make further reductions of nuclear arsenals impossible. Instead, the President said, he would offer "my German colleagues" a regionally-based missile defence system with Nato, a project that would not require any revision to the treaty.

The Russian leader introduced the idea in Rome last week and he believes that it would not need a new treaty to work. It would fall within the limits of a 1997 disarmament agreement between the United States and Russia allowing regional defences against missiles with a range of less than 2,200 miles.

Mr Putin said yesterday that he had again raised the idea with President Clinton in a telephone conversation last Friday. The Germans and other Europeans could be tempted to give political support to such a scheme - but Washington is deeply suspicious.

The main technical objection is that it does not give the United States protection from long-range missiles fired from North Korea and Iran. Moreover, the Russian plan would not even give some European countries - Britain included - the necessary protection from a North Korean launch. The Putin idea seems to fall within the long Cold War tradition of Moscow diplomacy, driving a wedge between the United States and Europe, but also splitting Western Europe itself and exploiting differences in geography.

A decision on the new US system has to be made this summer if it is to be in place by 2005, when North Korea and Iran are expected to be able to fire intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching American territory.

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