Warsaw - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday dismissed a Russian threat to deploy missiles near the Polish border to counter a planned US missile defence system.

"I wouldn't attach too much weight to these types of declarations," the Polish Press Agency quotes Tusk as saying.

Hours earlier, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said Moscow would deploy short-range missiles in its Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad.

"From time to time plans come from the side of our Russian neighbours to place different rockets in different places," Tusk said.

"We judge realistically the level of Poland's safety, the European Union's and NATO's as relatively little dependent on another statement of this type."

Pentagon plans to base missile interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar in Czech Republic have angered Moscow, which says the system is aimed at countering its nuclear arsenal.

The Bush administration says the system is meant to protect against growing ballistic missile threats from "rogue states" such as Iran. (dpa)