- guardian.co.uk, Saturday June 10 2000 02.11 BST
The rejection will be keenly felt by Russia's defence minister, Igor Sergeyev, who made a special trip to Nato headquarters in Brussels to brief the alliance on how his country thought the threat of an attack from so-called rogue states should be countered.
It is also highly embarrassing for President Vladimir Putin since it was the first time a Russian defence minister had visited Nato since Moscow fell out with the organisation over the war in Kosovo.
But the US defence secretary, William Cohen, was adamant that Marshal Sergeyev did little to put flesh on the bones of an alternative Russian proposal announced by President Putin on Monday after a summit with the US president, Bill Clinton.
"It's unclear to me exactly what Russia has in mind. It's basically a statement about an idea. It's not a system," he said after the meeting. Mr Cohen also warned that Russia's proposals, if implemented, would leave large swaths of the United States and Europe unprotected from the threat of rogue missile launches from pariah states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
"It is not a system that could provide protection to the United States, or to much of Europe. So at this point it's an idea that does not appear to be feasible or desirable for protecting us against the kind of threats that are emerging."
Mr Cohen was at pains to stress Washington's willingness to try to lay to rest concerns which have been raised by Russia and European countries such as France and Germany.
The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, warned earlier this month that America's determination to develop a sophisticated shield which could shoot down missiles in space risks rekindling a global arms race and weakening Nato. But the Nato secretary general, George Robertson, was yesterday keen to lower the temperature and played down any differences of opinion.
America is keen to have its own defensive system in place by 2005 when it believes that the threat of a nuclear strike from rogue states will be a real possibility. But to do this it needs to persuade Russia to amend the crucial anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty of 1972.
Mr Sergeyev said yesterday that Russia's proposals, which envisage a more limited missile defence shield, would require no such treaty revision.
"The Putin proposal for theatre defence does not compromise in any way the ABM treaty," he said. But American defence officials said the Russian proposal was even more complicated than their own.
