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Putin Offers to Join Missile Shield Effort
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"It is too early to speak about that," Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said when asked about the interceptor missiles in a conference call with reporters.
U.S. officials, however, said they want to deploy interceptor missiles as soon as possible.
"These are long lead-time items, and it would take time to get them deployed," Hadley said. "And, secondly, we've been surprised many times by the extent to which countries have been able to dramatically increase the range of their missiles in a way that was faster than our intelligence community predicted."
According to the Web site Globalsecurity.org, the Qabala station in Azerbaijan began operating in 1988. With a 16-story radar building, it can track ballistic missile trajectories in the Southern Hemisphere and much of Asia, and is a critical link in Russia's early warning system.
The current lease, which expires in 2012, calls for Russia to make yearly payments of $7 million to Azerbaijan.
Putin said he had talked Wednesday about his proposal with Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev, whom he described as amenable to the idea.
"The president of Azerbaijan stressed that he will only be glad to contribute to the cause of global security and stability," Putin said.
Staff writer Walter Pincus in Washington contributed to this report.
