Russia has threatened to make a military response should the missile defense deal between Washington and the Czech Republic be endorsed.

"If a US strategic anti-missile shield is deployed near our borders, we will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military resources," a Foreign Ministry statement said on Tuesday, without specifying what the response would entail.

The statement came hours after US and Czech officials reached an initial agreement on the deployment of a tracking radar system as well as American troops on Czech soil.

It is part of an extended shield that Washington says is necessary to prevent potential missile attacks by so-called "rogue" states implying Iran. Russia dismisses the likelihood of such threats.

The US also wants to install a radar system twinned with interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland, although the two countries have failed to reach a deal over the issue.

Analysts say Russia fears not only a potential long-term threat to its own nuclear deterrent and airspace security, but that it is also wary of NATO's prospective enlargement plan to include the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia.

In February, then-president Vladimir Putin said Moscow would aim its missiles towards Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic if NATO enlargement or the proposed US missile defense plan got underway.

FF/BGH