In a landmark speech in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen also encouraged Russia to undertake a joint review of the new security threats they face, as the basis of a new partnership between them.

Russia's envoy to the world's biggest military alliance welcomed the speech as "very positive and very constructive", but said the proposals in it needed to be carefully analysed.

"We need Russia as a partner in resolving the great issues of our time," Rasmussen, NATO's top politician, said in the speech at the Carnegie Endowment think-tank in Brussels.

"We should explore the potential for linking the US, NATO and Russia missile defence systems at an appropriate time," he said, a day after Washington dropped plans to extend its massive missile shield into Europe.

The planned shield, with 10 interceptors based in Poland linked to a powerful radar in the Czech Republic, deeply angered Moscow, which saw the multi-billion dollar structure as a threat to Russian security.

Moscow's envoy, Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin, said that NATO and Russia had successfully conducted computer tests linking their systems, and that such a link up would be technically possible.

"Military experts think that it's possible," he said. "This possibility exists in our cooperation but we have to understand much more profoundly this proposal."

He said Moscow and NATO needed first to complete a common analysis of all the missile threats, then find a political or legal regime to frame their response, with ways to deal with any breaches.

"Only the third step will be the possibility to cooperate in a military case," he said.

Rasmussen also invited Russia to focus on the common threats they face, and to work together in a modernised NATO-Russia Council, where the two discuss areas of cooperation and air their many differences.

"This is why I propose that we undertake a joint review of NATO's and Russia's common threats and challenges. We need an agreed analytical basis which we can then use to further enhance our practical cooperation," he said.

"We don't have to start from scratch," he said.

NATO and its old Cold War foe have been at loggerheads for years over arms treaties, missile defence, their stance on the independence of Kosovo -- where the alliance has a peacekeeping force -- and their attitude toward Iran.

Relations soured badly last year, after Moscow sent its troops into Georgia, and then recognised the indepedence of two breakaway Georgian regions.

Rasmussen's speech, symbolically his first major public address since taking office in August -- a year after the Georgia war -- appeared to offer a new beginning, and Rogozin welcomed its content.

"I think that it was very positive and very constructive and we have to analyse together all the ... proposals about the new beginning of NATO-Russia cooperation" he told reporters minutes after the speech was over.

"It's good news for us," he added.

When asked whether the speech contained new elements, Rogozin said: "Yes, absolutely."

Rasmussen also said that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's ideas on a new Euro-Atlantic security arrangement should be taken into consideration.

"We must all aim for a Euro-Atlantic security architecture in which Russia sees herself reflected," he said.

He also invited Russian experts to participate in the recently started process whereby NATO is re-writing its mission statement, the so-called strategic concept, in response to modern security threats and needs.

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