TALLINN, Estonia — Russian threats to position missiles near Poland to counter a U.S. missile defense plan in Europe are misguided, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today, suggesting that Moscow’s latest aggressive rhetoric harkens back to the old Cold War era.

Unleashing his own pointed criticism, Gates said that Russia’s missile threat appears aimed at Europe. And he dismissed as not credible Russia’s latest offer to forgo its missile plan if the U.S. would agree not to deploy a defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Speaking at the close of a meeting of NATO defense ministers here, Gates and other officials also signaled that it is inevitable that Ukraine will join the international alliance, although there are hurdles and opposition both from within the struggling new  democracy and other allied nations.

The meeting was set largely to deal with the Ukraine’s membership effort — a move that Russia opposes and sees as part of an unsettling westward shift of former Soviet republics in the region. But overshadowing the meeting were the escalating tensions with Russia in the region as Moscow tries to reassert itself.

The latest missile threat from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev came under fire from NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who called the remarks unsolicited, unnecessary and unhelpful.

And Gates said the threat, made just after the U.S. election of President-elect Barack Obama, was “hardly the welcome a new American administration deserves. Such provocative remarks are unnecessary and misguided.”

“Quite frankly, I’m not clear what the missiles would be for in Kaliningrad. After all the only real emerging threat on Russia’s periphery is in Iran, and I don’t think the Iskander missile has the range to get there from Kaliningrad,” snapped Gates. “Why they would threaten to point missiles at European nations seems quite puzzling to me.”

He said a key reason for his attendance at the meeting was to show U.S. support for Eastern European countries that are looking to align themselves with the West. Those nations, he said, are understandably on edge in the wake of Russia’s incursion into Georgia in August.

However, Gates stressed that the U.S.-planned missile defense system is no threat to Russia and he said that Washington would prefer to seek a constructive relationship with Moscow.

This is the prefercenc over having leaders there engage in “the kind of rhetoric associated with a bygone era.”

Gates and others talked somewhat optimistically about Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO, despite divisions in that country over the prospect, and continued opposition from several alliance members.

Foreign ministers are expected to discuss the languishing issue at a meeting in Brussels later this year, but as expectations for approval of a membership plan in December have dimmed, NATO leaders have suggested there may be other avenues to follow.

Earlier in the day, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves suggested that the current membership plan process may be outdated. And while Gates and others said that Ukraine must address defense budget shortfalls, improve military planning and reconcile its political divide, they said failure to approve membership in December does not mean it won’t ever be passed.

“There is inevitability about it,” said Gates. “If the Russians see the failure to adopt (a membership plan) in December as a victory, that would be a mistake.”

Medvedev has warned that Moscow will deploy short-range Iskander missiles to Russia’s western enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, “to neutralize, if necessary, a missile defense system.”

Medvedev also blamed Washington for the war in Georgia and the world financial crisis, and repeated claims that the U.S. missile defense facilities planned for Poland and the Czech Republic are meant to weaken Russia.

U.S. leaders have repeatedly disputed that charge, insisting that the system is designed to protect the region from an Iranian threat.

———

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil