Russia, United States Consider Jointly-Controlled Missile System

In an attempt to ease the awful tensions between the United States and Russia recently, Vladimir Putin proposed using a former Soviet radar site in Azerbaijan as the warning mechanism to detect nuclear missiles launched by "rogue states," Bloomberg reported today. The bad blood started with US plans to deploy a missile-interception system in former Soviet-controlled territory.

The Russian president said that he would drop his objections to the missile defense "shield" and not point his missiles at Europe if the radar installation was in a former Soviet republic and controlled by the Russians. Azerbaijan is on the Caspian Sea that borders Iran. Iran and North Korea are the two main nuclear concerns of the United States.

The United States wanted to put the radar installation in the Czech Republic.

"Interesting proposal - let's let our experts have a look at it," White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told the Associated Press was Bush's reply to the offer.

Putin has still not accepted the idea of the US installing interceptor missiles in Poland, calling the proposed shield "premature" at this stage, since no defined threat of nuclear missile attack has yet formulated in Iran, North Korea, or any other rogue nation. However, the suggestion of cooperation itself seemed enough to diffuse what had escalated into a horrible tension between the two former arch enemies.

"The thing that is interesting is the willingness of the Russian president to make some concrete proposals for defense cooperation. Russia has some concerns. It's clear that the United States must take those concerns into account. I think also President Putin wanted to de-escalate tensions on the issue... What President Putin was simply talking about was using the output of the radar system in Azerbaijan as the input to a missile defense system, using a resource that was built during the Soviet period and continues to operate,'' Hadley told the Chicago Tribune.