MOSCOW (Agencies) -- Moscow wants Russian military officers permanently stationed at planned U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic to make sure the facilities are not targeting Russia, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, AP reported.

Sergey Lavrov warned that Polish and Czech resistance to the idea could ""devaluate"" U.S. proposals intended to assuage Russian concerns about the missile shield.
His statement signaled that prospects for settling the U.S.-Russian rift over missile defense are low despite recent American attempts to soothe tensions.
Lavrov also warned that a U.S. failure to respond to Moscow's concerns on missile defense would prompt Russia to deploy weapons capable of piercing the missile shield in order to protect its security.
""Russia would respond with military-technical measures,"" Lavrov said.
He said that Moscow wants to make sure that the battery of 10 U.S. missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic are not directed at Russia.
""We are mostly interested in two things: a permanent presence of our officers and a reliable means of technical control,"" Lavrov said.
The United States has said it would be willing to allow periodic Russian inspections of the two proposed sites, if the Czech and Polish governments approved.
But Warsaw and Prague have opposed any permanent Russian presence, a highly contentious notion for two nations that endured Moscow's control and the presence of Soviet troops during the Cold War.
Poland's top missile defense negotiator, Witold Waszczykowski, called the Russian demand ""too far-fetched.""
""The installation could be accessible to visitors or inspectors, but we don't think there is any need for a permanent presence of Russian inspectors there,"" Waszczykowski told the PAP news agency from Moscow after consultations Tuesday that failed to narrow differences.
Lavrov acknowledged that Polish and Czech officials ""don't even want to hear about a permanent Russian presence.""
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and President Bush failed to overcome differences over the system during a weekend meeting at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
The Czech Republic has agreed to host the radar base, while Poland is still in negotiations with the U.S. on the matter. Warsaw essentially favors the deal, but is attempting to win military concessions in exchange from Washington.
Some 250 members of the U.S. military and civilian personnel will be at the U.S. radar base in the Czech Republic during the rotation, Czech Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zuzana Opletalova said on Tuesday, Xinhua reported.
During regular operation, it would be 170 people at the most under the Czech-U.S. SOFA (Strategic Framework and the Status of Forces Agreement) bilateral treaty that specifies a legal framework for the stay of U.S. soldiers on Czech soil, Opletalova said.
Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek told journalists recently that the negotiations on the SOFA agreement should be completed by Friday.
Veronika Kuchynova Smigolova, head of the Czech Foreign Ministry security policy department, said on Tuesday the radar base would enhance the country's security even if interceptor missiles were not located in Poland.
Stefan Fuele, Czech ambassador to NATO, said a confidential technical report showed that the possible U.S. bases in the Czech Republic and Poland would not cover the whole territory of NATO countries.
-Russian FM vows to stem NATO expansion
Lavrov also said Tuesday that Moscow will do all it can to prevent the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia from joining NATO.
Lavrov warned that the bids by Russia's two neighbors to join the Western alliance could worsen the Kremlin's relations with the countries supporting them.
""We will do all we can to prevent Ukraine's and Georgia's accession into NATO and to avoid an inevitable serious exacerbation of our relations with both the alliance and our neighbors,"" Lavrov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
A NATO summit last week rejected starting Ukraine and Georgia on the path to membership despite strong support from the U.S. Germany, France and some others feared such a move would strain ties with Moscow. NATO, however, has promised to incorporate both nations at some point.
Lavrov denounced the alliance's expansion plans as rooted in Cold War logic. ""This is enlargement in the spirit of that very Cold War logic, the spirit of bloc confrontation, and the spirit of bloc absorption of territories,"" he said.
Lavrov pointed at divisions within Ukraine over NATO membership and emphasized that Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia denounced the move.
Putin has vowed to broaden Russian support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia and warned Georgia and the West against the use of force or pressure to bring them back under control of the central government.
The Kremlin-controlled parliament last month urged the government to consider recognizing the independence claims of the two separatist provinces, which broke from Georgian control in early 1990s wars.
Putin, however, has stopped short of saying Russia would recognize their independence — a move that would severely damage ties with the West and could spark a war with Georgia. He gave no indication Russia would abandon its official acceptance of Georgia's territorial integrity.
-Russia sees no sense in sending troops to Kosovo: Lavrov
Russia does not see any sense in sending troops to Kosovo, Foreign Minister said in an exclusive interview with the Echo of Moscow radio, Itar-Tass reported.
He indicated that the situation around the UN mission in the breakaway Serbian province has not witnessed any dramatic changes compared with the period several years ago when Russia decided to pull its military contingent out of there.
""We took this decision because we were unwilling to get associated with the policies conducted by KFOR, which could be described as 'the reverted ethnic cleansing',"" Lavrov said.