Moscow says it would gladly hit the reset button on relations with Washington, but warns that it would never double-cross Tehran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stood firm on Moscow's relations with Tehran on Saturday, asserting that it would never agree to increase pressure on Iran.

"It's our neighbor, it's a country which can play a very important role in solving a number of acute international issues, such as the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and different aspects of Mideast peace settlement," Lavrov in a speech to a group of political strategists.

Lavrov waved aside recent US attempts to use a controversial missile shield as a means to buy Moscow's support for tougher sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"Any trade-offs would be unprincipled and unrealistic," he explained. "They would undermine trust in our diplomacy, and we cherish that trust no less than others."

The Bush administration had tabled a motion to station 10 silo-based missiles in Poland and a missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic, allegedly to defend its allies against missile threats from countries like Iran.

Russia has inveighed against the US ballistic missile defense (BMD) plan, suggesting that Washington seeks to weaken Moscow's position in its traditional region of influence.

US President Barack Obama has said that he may slow down the BMD plan, if Russia agrees to adopt a hard line on Iran's nuclear activities.

Senior Russian officials have repeatedly ruled out the possibility of a trade-off between Moscow-Tehran ties and a missile program.

"If we are talking about any "swap" [Iran for missile defense], this is not how the question is being put. This would not be productive," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had said on March 3. "No one is linking these issues to some kind of trade-offs, particularly on the Iranian issue."

Washington has tried to justify its missile plans by portraying Iran's missile development as a threat to world stability -- an allegation that has been rejected by senior political and military figures in the West.

"The argument that the US would be naked against an Iranian threat unless we deploy the GMD system in Europe is simply not right," said Democratic congresswoman Ellen Tauscher earlier in the month.


"No sensible person believes in fairy tales about the Iranian missile threat, and that thousands of kilometers from Tehran on the coast of the Baltic Sea, it is necessary to station a missile interceptor system," Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said on Nov. 6.

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