KEY POINTS:
America's plan to install the forward edge of its anti-missile shield in five European countries is reviving a political mood seen two decades ago in the world's last big nuclear arms race.
Washington is lobbying hard to deploy the facilities in Britain, Greenland, which is a Danish territory,
in Poland and in the Czech Republic, where there are staunchly pro-United States governments, and in the Caucasus.
These would be the forward positions of a shield designed chiefly to defend the US East Coast from ballistic missiles fired by "rogue states", the code phrase for Iran and North Korea.
Washington argues the footprint of protection will also cover many of its European allies.
The scheme has ignited debate and division similar to those of the 1980s, when Nato positioned new US nuclear missiles in five European countries to offset a buildup by Soviet medium-range weapons.
"The deployment in Europe of an anti-missile system is raising as many fundamental questions as nuclear arms did at the time of the Cold War," said a European diplomat in Brussels.
"It may shift the strategic balance and alter the political climate."
European leaders and apparently many citizens fear that the plan will dangerously reignite tensions with Moscow. Some critics say countries hosting the shield may become targets in their own right. Others ask how trustworthy the protection for Europe will be if it is an American finger on the button, rather than Nato's.
Germany and France have led the expressions of concern and called for Russia to be closely involved in discussions. French President Jacques Chirac says the project could create "new lines of division in Europe", while German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging Poland to "resolve the matter within Nato" rather than bilaterally with the United States.
"We do not want a new arms race in Europe," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
In the Czech Republic, inhabitants near an Army base where a radar tracking station would be deployed have started to hold referenda. In the village of Trokavec, 72 out of 90 residents eligible to vote cast their ballot, with 71 voting against deployment, and only one for.
Their votes are only symbolic, for the centre-right Government has decided to submit the project to a parliamentary vote.
The leaders of Britain and Denmark are in favour of upgrading radar stations for the shield.
Poland is volunteering to host a battery of 10 interceptors, which would launch a refrigerator-sized "kill vehicle" designed to whack a ballistic missile warhead in space. There would be a forward-based radar somewhere in the Caucasus, at an as yet undisclosed location. The US wants the system to be operational by 2013.
Despite US claims that the system is purely defensive, Moscow has responded furiously, seeing it as an attempt to neutralise its nuclear deterrent. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week accused Washington of playing "strategic games" and of using the Nato-Russia Council - a forum launched to build trust between the Atlantic alliance and Moscow - to "camouflage" unilateral action.
Nato's official position is that the shield is a bilateral affair, and thus not a question for the alliance itself.
But within the organisation, there is palpable worry that a shield purely under US control and covering only part of Europe would badly damage an alliance whose credibility has already been weakened by divisions over the Iraq War.
