Iran tests show US missile shield not needed: Russia

MOSCOW  - Iran's recent missile tests showed the limited range of Tehran's arsenal and proved that a planned US missile defence shield in Europe is unnecessary, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.

"The tests in Iran confirm that Iran has missiles with a range of up to 2,000 kilometres and confirm... that a missile defence shield with these parameters is not needed to monitor or react to such threats," he said.

"We believe that any issue related to Iran should be resolved through negotiation, through political-diplomatic means... and not through threats," Lavrov told reporters in Moscow after talks with his Jordanian counterpart.

In a Friday prayers sermon broadcast on state radio in Tehran, a senior Iranian imam warned Israel and the US that they would be made to regret any attack against Iran, but denied any aggressive intent towards the Jewish state.

"You liar Israel and you liar the White House... if you want to make an invasion we will give you such a response that you will regret your move," Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani said.

He shrugged off concerns about the perceived threatening nature of the Islamic republic's war exercise.

"Iran does not recognise Israel because it is an occupier... But Iran does not want to get involved in a war with it and does not want to shoot its missiles to Tel Aviv," the conservative cleric said.

The state-run IRNA agency quoted Ahmad Khadem al-Melleh, spokesman for the secretariat of Iran's supreme national security council, as saying that his country's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana will hold their next talks on ending the nuclear standoff on July 19 in Geneva, despite Western concern over the test-firing of several missiles by Tehran.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a fresh appeal for Iran to suspend nuclear enrichment work as Washington warned Tehran to cease its "provocative" missile tests.

"I have been calling on Iranian authorities to fully comply with all relevant Security Council resolutions and continue their negotiations with European Union and concerned parties," Ban said Thursday on his return from a two-week, three-nation Asian tour.

Meanwhile, the White House said Friday that Iranian missile tests did not change the US determination to resolve the crisis diplomatically.

Asked if the United States was more concerned after the tests, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "I would just characterise it as continued Iranian defiance of international obligations and further isolating its people, but I don't think that we are anywhere off, that we are at all off the course that we have been on, which is trying to solve this diplomatically."

"What it does, however, is re-strengthen the resolve of the international community that strongly believes that Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon," she added.