TASHKENT, July 4 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's deputy prime minister said Wednesday the media could "forget the term Cold War" if the U.S. agreed to Russia's latest missile defense proposal to use a base in Russia instead of Central Europe.
"If the proposal [on a new radar in Russia] is accepted, we will have no reason to deploy more missiles in our European regions," including the Kaliningrad Region, a Russian exclave bordering on Lithuania and Poland, Sergei Ivanov told reporters.
"After that I will request that journalists forget such terms like 'Cold War'," Ivanov said.
President Vladimir Putin, during his recent two-day meeting with President George W. Bush at his father's house at Kennebunkport, Maine, proposed incorporating a new radar, currently being built in Southern Russia, into part of a missile defense system managed by the NATO-Russia Joint Permanent Council, of which Moscow and Washington are members.
When asked whether Russia really could counteract the perceived threat from U.S. missile defense plans to deploy bases in Central Europe, Ivanov said: "We have found an asymmetric and appropriate response."
Ivanov also said Russia was ready to upgrade its early warning radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan, which was also proposed as an alternative to U.S. missile plans, but America has repeatedly called it obsolete.
Ivanov said the radar could be installed with state of the art equipment, "The technology is completely new, it is already in use with our Space Forces."
All information from the new radar will be compatible with a "joint information system" aggregating antimissile data in two centers in Moscow and Brussels.
The U.S. has said it wants to place a radar and a host of interceptor missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic to fend off what Washington sees as an impending missile threat from Iran and North Korea.
Russia's future radar base is located near the town of Armavir, Krasnodar Territory - about 700 km (450 miles) to the northwest of the Iranian border and just about 100 km to the north of Sochi, the Russian alpine resort on the Black Sea, whose bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics will be decided tomorrow in Guatemala.
