STEVE GUTTERMAN
MOSCOW

RUSSIA yesterday tested new strategic and tactical missiles, flexing its muscles in the teeth of military disputes with the West and bitter opposition to a US plan for a defensive shield in Europe.

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia had tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of carrying multiple independent warheads and a tactical cruise missile with an increased range, boasting that the weapons can penetrate any missile defence system.

"As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems," he said. "In terms of defence and security, Russians can look calmly to the country's future."

President Vladimir Putin and Ivanov, seen as his potential successor, have repeatedly said Russia will continue to improve its nuclear arsenal and respond to US plans to deploy components of a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Nato nations were Warsaw Pact members in the Cold War.

Russia has bristled at the plans, dismissing US assertions that the system would be aimed at blocking possible attacks by Iran and saying it would destroy the strategic balance of forces in Europe.

"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to fill it with new kinds of weapons," Putin told a news conference.

The new ICBM, called the RS-24, is seen as eventually replacing the ageing RS-18s and RS-20s that are the backbone of the country's missile forces. Those are known in the West as the SS-19 Stiletto and the SS-18 Satan.

Alexander Pikayev, an arms control expert, said Russia had been seeking to improve its capability to penetrate missile defence systems and the new missile would probably fulfil that goal.

#In Brussels, the leader of the Socialist group in the European Parliament attacked the US missile shield plan as "nonsense". Martin Schultz said his party had found common cause with Russia in its opposition to the shield after an EU delegation met Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Putin's foreign policy aide, in Moscow.

"I was able to understand the Russian sentiments on this, it is complete nonsense. It is our common evaluation of this situation," Schultz said.

The leader of Germany's Social Democrats, which govern in a grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, yesterday said the United States must be ready to consider abandoning the shield plan.

While Ivanov's sabre-rattling about missile defence penetration was clearly aimed at the United States - and at Russians who will vote next March for a successor to Putin - he suggested Russia's armament efforts were also aimed at countering a potential threat from the Middle East and Asia.

"We see perfectly how our eastern and southern neighbours . . . are acquiring short and medium-range missiles," he said at Kapustin Yar, the southern Russian site where the tactical missiles were tested.

Russia is also in dispute with the West over another Soviet-era arms pact, the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.

Putin has announced a moratorium on observance of the treaty and threatened to withdraw altogether if the United States and other Nato members do not ratify an 1999 amended version.

Russia on Monday formally requested a conference of treaty signatories in Vienna next week.-AP/Reuters