RUSSIA - Feb. 20 - Moscow Offers Europeans Alternative Missile Shield.

Visiting NATO Secretary-General George Robertson receives documents laying out in more detail a concept Pres. Putin first floated last year: a limited theatre-based anti-missile defence system intended to address the threat of rogue states often cited by Washington. (The plan appears to rely on developing transportable units that could be moved to counter specific threats during a crisis, rather than a far more elaborate network of defences targeting intercontinental rockets envisioned by Pres. George W. Bush). Putin has told Lord Robertson at the Kremlin: "We hope that as soon as possible your specialists will study our proposals, after which our specialists - military and civilian specialists - will be ready to visit Brussels to give the necessary explanations and, very important in my view, to explain to the citizens of Europe what Russia proposes". Robertson has accepted the proposals and said they would be studied seriously. (But he left little hope that the Russian proposal would succeed in dividing the Western alliance despite doubts among NATO partners about the wisdom of the planned US anti-missile system). Robertson says: "I made it clear that the NATO allies accept that the United States has made its decision to have an effective missile defence. But what is important now is that we now have a Russian proposal to deal with the same kind of perceived threat". (The missile defence issue has increasingly aggravated relations between Washington and Moscow since Bush took office promising to move forward with development left stalled under Clinton. Unable to wield any influence with the new administration, Putin has tried to around it, rallying other critical countries like China in opposition and waging an aggressive campaign to sway West European leaders.

Yet in foreign policy circles in Moscow, a consensus is emerging that these efforts will not amount to much in the end. Washington has demonstrated it sees no need to compromise as Secretary of State Colin Powell and FM Igor Ivanov prepare for their first meeting on Feb. 24. Representative Curt Weldon, a Republican of Pennsylvania, arrived in Moscow this week with what he called a verbal message from Bush to Putin but no new proposals. Recent comments by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the CIA Director George Tenet, describing Russia as a possible threat to the US have left the Kremlin chafing. Nothing that "we can read", Putin said it "bothers us" when Western officials "try to restore the image of Russia as the evil empire which threatens someone, although I think it does not scare anybody" anymore. The always touchy issue of NATO expansion also added a flavour of tension to the Feb. 20 talks. Still sore about the admission of former East European client states, Putin reasserted his opposition to extension to onetime territories of the Soviet Union, namely the Baltic republics. Putin said: "The expansion of the defence alliance up to our borders can be explained as a response to an alleged threat from Russia". But Lord Robertson played down the issue, noting that NATO may even be open to Russia someday, a prospect that Putin's security adviser accepted as a "theoretical" possibility. The two sides tried to present the visit as a mark of improvement in the West's relations with Russia, as they reopened a NATO information centre in Moscow that closed down during the friction over the 1999 air war in Kosovo. Robertson also invited Putin to visit NATO headquarters in October).