Munich, February 12:

The US administration said yesterday it was putting parts of its contentious missile defence shield in central Europe simply to protect its ‘friends and allies’ in the region, brushing aside loud protests from Russia and denying that there would be any return to the cold war.

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, told a gathering of international leaders and policy-makers at a Munich security conference that the interceptor missiles and radar installations planned for Poland and the Czech Republic was not directed against Russia - it offered no protection against the Kremlin’s arsenal of nuclear-tipped intercontinental rockets.

“This umbrella of protection unifies the alliance rather than divides it,” he told a conference reeling from the bitter broadside against America delivered on Saturday by president Vladimir Putin. Putin used the conference for his harshest attack so far on Washington, accusing it of seeking a world where the US was the sole power centre, the only decision-maker, a ‘world of one master, one sovereign’.

US politicians described the speech as an astonishing outburst from a bygone age.