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Putin criticizes U.S. missile plans

The Russian president tells journalists that foreigners who unfairly criticize his country do not wish it well.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 2, 2007

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia faces unfair criticism and needless military threats from the West, lashing out in an annual news conference at U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses in Eastern Europe and rejecting grumbling that he is using Russia's gas and oil exports as political weapons.

Putin fielded questions from reporters for more than 3 1/2 hours, but left some key questions unanswered: whom he wants to succeed him next year, and whom he believes is behind the recent slayings of Kremlin critics.

Putin described Russia as economically robust but plagued by an income divide, uneasy about the intentions of the United States and insistent on its own reliability as a major energy supplier to Europe.

The news conference gives the president the opportunity to portray Russia, as he often does, as a country unfairly criticized by foreigners who do not wish it well.

Putin denounced the possible deployment of elements of an American missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, scoffing at U.S. claims that they would be aimed at intercepting missiles from Iran. He said Russia would take unspecified retaliatory measures.

As he has before, Putin said Russia's latest Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles were capable of penetrating missile defenses and added that Moscow is developing more effective weapons against which antimissile systems would be "helpless."

After energy price disputes with Belarus interrupted Russian oil supplies to Europe this winter, Western concerns about Russia's reliability as an energy supplier grew. But Putin rejected suggestions that the country is using energy as a political weapon.

[Last modified February 2, 2007, 01:38:37]