Putin's bellicose rhetoric casts a shadow over start of G8 summit

[Purveyor]

President George Bush arrived in the Czech Republic last night to counter the escalating rhetoric from the Kremlin after Vladimir Putin cast an icy chill over the G8 summit with a warning of a new nuclear arms race.

The Russian President's comments, in which he said Russia would aim missiles at Europe if the US pursued its plans to install missile defence systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, caused consternation in European capitals yesterday.

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Amid talk of a new Cold War, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, sought to lower the diplomatic temperature, saying: "This is 2007, not 1987 ... We need to drop the rhetoric ... and realise this is the United States and Russia a very different period." But she added: " It doesn't really help anybody to start threatening the Europeans. ... You cannot launch a threat at Europe that is separable from the United States."

In his four-hour interview with selected newspapers ahead of the G8 summit, where he will meet President Bush, Mr Putin reserved his most bitter criticism for the US plans to install a missile defence shield in Europe. The US denies Russia is a target of the shield, which it insists is being developed against "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran ­ a deployment described as the "joke of the year" by Iran's top negotiator, Ali Larijani, yesterday.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2614549.ece