Nato defence ministers agreed on Thursday to explore building a "bolt-on" anti-missile system that would plug gaps in a planned US shield in Europe.
However, a meeting with Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov yielded no progress. Diplomats said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates stressed that a Russian offer to use a radar in Azerbaijan was no alternative to a US plan to site the shield in eastern Europe, which Moscow opposes.
The United States plans to use interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic, a configuration Washington says is ideal for blocking any missile, particularly from Iran, heading towards the United States and most of Europe.
Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the shield would not cover all Nato allies, and analysts suggested Turkey, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria were most at risk. "The question is what are the political and military implications of the site," de Hoop Scheffer said.
"Secondly, would it be possible - that will be the centre of the discussion - in Nato to see that a system is developed ... that can be bolted on to the general missile defence system as it will be installed by the United States?"
The study should be completed by February. Nato officials hope the alliance can agree by a summit in April in Romania to start work on such a system, which would deploy complementary interceptors to cover south-east Europe.
"What you see here is allies agreeing to adapt Nato's work to the reality that there will be a (US) long-range system," said a senior US official who requested anonymity. Russia has said the US scheme is a threat to its own security and that the proposed US bases on its doorstep could be converted to more dangerous uses in the future.
Tension between Washington and Moscow alarmed European Nato members, particularly after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to target Russian missiles on Europe if Washington went ahead with building the shield.
But Putin offered at last week's Group of Eight summit to cooperate with the United States on missile defence by sharing data from a Russian-leased radar system in Azerbaijan.
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