MOSCOW - Russia called on the United States to stop creating an anti-ballistic missile defense system in Europe before the two nations negotiate on the joint use of an Azeri radar system, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) attends the NATO foreign ministers informal meeting in Oslo April 26, 2007. Russia's proposal to the United States to use jointly a radar in Azerbaijan makes it unnecessary for Washington to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe, Lavrov said on Saturday.[Reuters]

"There must be a freeze on the deployment of missile defense facilities in Europe for the whole period of analysis and negotiations," Lavrov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

"We invite the United States to jointly and competently assess everything and also to sort things out and achieve universal understanding," he said.

According to Lavrov, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush will hold a detailed discussion on the problems related to the missile defense system in Kennebenkport, the State of Maine, on July 1-2.

Earlier on Thursday, at the G8 summit, Putin proposed to Bush that the United States and Russia jointly use the Gabala radar base in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, to replace its plan to station missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic.

Bush described the proposal as "interesting" and said that the two sides had set up a working group of experts to see how they could cooperate on missile defense.