The Obama administration is exploring options to drop the planned missile shield for Eastern Europe, a move that could go down well with Moscow and Berlin.

Administration officials told the New York Times that they plan to present the review of the missile system after months of work so that it could be used at an upcoming meeting between President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev.

The two presidents are scheduled to meet in New York next month during the annual opening at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The Obama review team will present a list of options that could be chosen rather than a single recommendation to a panel of senior national security officials in the coming weeks.

After that they will take the matter to cabinet-rank officials and the president, who will make the final decision.

The proposed options could range from retaining the Polish and Czech sites selected by President George W. Bush to dropping them both.

Building launching pads or radar installations in Turkey or the Balkans alongside developing land-based versions of the Aegis SM-3- a ship-based anti-missile system- would probably be advised for an option which excludes both sites.

Meanwhile, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said it was premature to discuss what the review would conclude or when it would be ready for presentation.

“Our review of our missile defense strategy is ongoing and has not reached completion yet,” he said.

The unnamed administration officials working on the review claimed, however, that the review was not intended to appease Russia.

Russia's ambassador to NATO Dmitry O. Rogozin, however, said that Moscow anticipated news from Obama in September.

“I hope that Medvedev will take some good result from this bilateral discussion in New York, and maybe in October we will live in a new world in Russian-American relations,” he said.

Denying an attempt to better US-Russian ties, the unmanned administration officials claimed that any changes would be to adjust to what they call an accelerating threat from shorter-range Iranian missiles.

This is while the previous US administration used a similar excuse to portray a need for the missile system, an excuse which was repeatedly rejected by Russian officials as incorrect.

Moscow believes that if implemented the missile system would not be there to prevent an Iranian attack but to undermine Russia's national security.

Commenting on the new US position, spokesman for the Polish foreign minister, Piotr Paszkowski said it was "clear that Eastern Europe is out of the epicenter of this American administration.”

“The missile defense system is now under review. The chances that it will be in Poland are 50-50," he added.

Poland stands to gain some financial advantages if the US goes through with its plan to set up a missile defense system site in the country.

Some analysts speculate that by shying away from the proposed plan, the Obama administration could also be trying to avoid the system's estimated costs of up to $1 billion in a state of economic crisis.

MJ/DT