Warsaw - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Saturday that the establishment of the US missile shield in his country was solely of concern to Poland and the United States.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, would have no influence on the project, Tusk said in Warsaw, according to Polish news agency PAP.

He expected "no comments, no actions" for a third country on the issue of the missile shield. Even friendly countries should not interfere, Tusk said.

He said Poland would be prepared whenever the US was ready to move forward with the project.

Over the last year, Russia has repeatedly expressed outrage at the US missile-defence plans. At the EU-Russia summit in Nice, France, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on the US to abandon its missile-defence programme in favour of a new security treaty, saying "before a global agreement (on European security), we should all refrain from unilateral steps that affect security in Europe."

He said the US should not go ahead with plans to site a missile- defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic until the 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has debated it in an expected summit in June or July 2009.

Medvedev also called for the creation of a "new pan-European space of security which could be joined by all nations and which could be a list of rules for the future," and which is "finding more and more support among EU leaders."

Sarkozy agreed that European and North American states should meet to discuss Medvedev's idea, first broached in June.

On November 5, Medvedev threatened that Russia would move missiles into its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, across the border with Poland and Lithuania, if the US plans went ahead.

In an article published Thursday, Medvedev told a French newspaper that the Kremlin will drop plans to deploy missiles to Kaliningrad if president-elect Barack Obama reverses Bush's plans to field 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic by 2013.

In August, the US signed an agreement with the Polish government agreeing to modernize Poland's military in exchange for the former Soviet satellite's hosting the interceptor missiles.

US President George W Bush says the two-pronged defensive shield in Czech Republic and Poland is needed to protect against attacks from Iran and other "rogue states."

The US wants to send a top diplomat to Russia before the end of Bush's term to discuss plans for deploying the missile-defence system.

However, Obama has been less committed to the deployment than Bush and, like other Democrats, is skeptical about the technical capabilities of the long-range interceptor system. But the president- elect has not taken a firm position on the deployment. (dpa)