The United States will make a new pitch to Russia at Nato talks in Oslo on Thursday over its planned missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, but diplomats doubt there will be any movement from Moscow soon.
Nato allies will seek to convince visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Moscow should back an independence plan for Serbia's Kosovo province. The two-day talks will also review Nato efforts to defeat Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Nato counterparts will meet Lavrov three days after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates failed during a trip to Moscow to convince Russia the shield was not a strategic threat to it.
"We'll continue to try to reassure the Russians as well as European publics that might have questions about missile defence," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.
Washington angered Moscow and unnerved some allies with its plan to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic from 2012 to help shield the United States from what it sees as possible attacks by countries such as Iran and North Korea.
It has since tried to allay Russian objections to the shield by offering Moscow cooperation, for example by sharing data from early warning systems and conducting joint exercises.
Gates spoke of progress at the talks but Lavrov said on Tuesday Moscow saw no interest in joining a project it felt had already been pre-determined in Washington. Alliance officials played down hopes of a breakthrough in Oslo. "It's too early. The Russians need more time to look at the US offer, which is very technical," said one Nato diplomat, asking not to be named.
But while Moscow has yet to be persuaded, Nato allies such as Germany - where left-wingers in the ruling coalition have raised fears of a new arms race - appear more satisfied after detailed presentations of the plan in the 27-nation alliance.
"It was accepted that the United States, of course, has the right to develop such a system for itself," one senior alliance diplomat said. However Nato Deputy Secretary-General Martin Erdmann was cautious. "I would not go as far as saying there is a consensus. The discussion has just started," he told a news briefing.
The US shield would in theory offer protection to most Nato European countries, who must now decide whether they want to pay for smaller shields to plug gaps in the US shield, which would not cover Turkey, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. Washington stresses the urgency of countering what it sees as an imminent threat from Iran, noting the West underestimated the speed of North Korea's ballistic missile programme.
"The US has put forward timelines (for its system). We can't simply let this pass," Erdmann said of concern in the alliance that some Nato members would feel like second-class allies if they ended up with less protection than others.