Top officers from the French and Russian militaries met in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss a planned European missile defence system as the Kremlin upped pressure on NATO to modify or abandon the project, dpa reported. Admiral Edouard Guillaud, chief of France's Defence Staff, hinted to reporters after meeting with his Russian counterpart that Paris and the Kremlin share similar views on the missile shield. "I am very glad to say that we are similar in our approaches," Guillaud said in comments reported by the Interfax news agency. "This concerns, of course, strategy and the question of missile defence." Russian army General Nikolai Makarov described the discussions as honest and open. "Further cooperation by Russia with NATO ... depends very much on how we resolve the missile defence question," he said.
