U.S. seeks "full partnership" with Russia on missiles

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is seeking "full partnership" with Moscow to bridge ballistic missile-defence differences that have strained U.S.-Russian ties for years, the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency said on Thursday.

He made the comments as President Barack Obama works with Moscow to cut nuclear weapons and weighs whether to go ahead with Bush-era plans to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and an advanced radar station in the Czech Republic -- plans strongly opposed by Moscow.

"The (new) approach is to lay out ideas, and not to have a fully developed plan," Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly told a group of Reuters editors and reporters, referring to missile defence discussions with Russia.

"You need to move forward at a prudent pace so that there are collaborative decisions, intermediate decisions made along the way, so that there is true partnership," he said.

Obama, during a two-day visit to Russia this week, called for a fresh era in bilateral security ties focussing on mutual interests. He and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev agreed to pursue a plan, first floated in the 1990s, to open a "Joint Data Exchange Centre" that would become the basis for sharing information on missile launches worldwide.

O'Reilly said he had not received any orders "to deviate" from expanding U.S. missile defences into Poland and the Czech Republic, an idea Moscow for years has called a threat to Russian security.

The initiative for these sites was put forward by former President George W. Bush as a hedge against Iran. Congress has said construction of the sites may not begin until those countries' parliaments have ratified their pacts on the projects with Washington.

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