COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - United States missile defence plans, which would require additional use of its Thule air base in northwest Greenland, are meeting opposition in the vast Arctic island and doubts in Denmark, which is responsible for its foreign policy.

``It would be dangerous for Greenland to permit an upgrade of the Thule radar,'' said Johan Lund Olsen, an influential member of the leftist Inuit party in a debate in the local parliament on Tuesday.

``Enemies of the United States would try to destroy it. This means that Greenland will be bombed,'' he told the single-chamber assembly in the capital Nuuk on the west coast 2,200 km (1,300 miles) south of Thule.

Thule, build in the 1950s, is an important link in the chain of radar stations that stretches from Alaska to the British Isles and is designed to detect missiles bound for North America.

Washington has informed Copenhagen of preliminary plans to upgrade the Thule radar, if President Bill Clinton decides this summer to deploy the proposed national missile defence or NMD.

But Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen told the Danish parliament last Friday that Thule must not be used in violation of international agreements.

ABM TREATY MUST STAND

Petersen referred in particular to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which prohibits systems such as NMD. U.S. and Russian arms control experts resumed talks on Tuesday on revisions sought by Washington to accommodate for NMD.

Arguing for the missiles shield, Washington says rogue states such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya could within a decade be able to launch nuclear, chemical or biological missile at North America.

Greenland's Prime Minister Jonathan Motzfeldt declared last November that the home-rule administration would not accept an upgrade of the Thule radar based on a unilateral American decision in violation of the ABM treaty.

``If upgrading the radar is on the agenda, Greenland's government expects to be directly involved in the deliberations,'' he added.

Petersen has rejected all earlier attempts by Nuuk to gain a voice in foreign and defence policy but has promised to keep the home-rule government fully informed.

Washington agreed last autumn to start talks on returning Dundas, a traditional Inuit hunting ground near Thule which appropriated when the base was built.

Some Greenlanders suspect that is a bid to win them over on the base upgrade but the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen and tThe Danish foreign ministry deny any link.