Tone down Cold War rhetoric: Russia

SEOUL: Russia''s foreign minister, in a fresh jab at U.S. plans to install a missile defence shield near Russian borders, said on Tuesday, time would be better spent coping with real threats.   

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the weekend said Moscow was prepared to return to Cold War ways of pointing missiles at Europe if Washington insisted on building the defence shield. "What we all need is to join our efforts to fight real, not hypothetical, threats. And for this work, Russia is ready," said Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of a conference in the South Korean capital. "If professionals sit down and just take a look at the map and the ballistic experts analyse the capability of Iran and North Korea, then it''s abundantly clear that President Putin is telling the truth."   

The United States says its shield is aimed at intercepting missile threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. The frosty exchanges are already overshadowing the run-up to a summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial countries. A senior U.S. official earlier called Putin''s comments about aiming missiles at Europe unhelpful.

But Lavrov dismissed suggestions that Moscow was the one raising tensions. "When we say that this (the U.S. missile defence plan) is something we don''t understand and this is something which causes real threats to Russia, we''re accused of Cold War rhetoric. "So let''s stop doing Cold War things and then I''m sure no one will be suspecting that somebody is using Cold War rhetoric."