MOSCOW, May 12. /TASS/. Deployment of the US missile defense in Europe is a direct threat to international security and stability, Moscow is considering response military-technical measures, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday.

"For many years, Russia has repeatedly paid attention to risks for international security and strategic stability, created by unilateral deployment of the US strategic missile defense not restricted by anything," Zakharova said.

"We have offered different options of settling the situation around missile defense and have been ready for close cooperation, up to establishment, jointly with NATO, of an antimissile architecture in Europe, which would be built in line with the principle of sectors," she said.

"It would really be able to protect the region from possible missile threats from beyond the Euro-Atlantic region," Zakharova said.

"We keep considering destructive activity of the United States and its allies in the sphere of missile defense as a direct threat to international and regional security and stability," she said. "The strategic situation in Europe is becoming much more complicated because of that."

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman also noted "a number of other problematic issues connected with the establishment of missile defense facilities in Europe." In particular, she said, antimissile systems deployed in Romania and Poland include "launch devices which are actually identical to those used on US naval ships for launch of interceptor missiles and Tomahawk intermediate-range cruise missiles."

"We consider the appearance of such launch devices on land as going out of line with one of the key provisions of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF)," Zakharova said. "By that, the United States violated the INF Treaty, which has to be said openly and without any additional diplomatic wordings. The talk is about violation of the treaty."

"Russia has repeatedly pointed to the danger of development of the situation in the missile defense sphere in line with a negative scenario, but our concerns are still ignored," she said.

"We are making relevant conclusions for ourselves from that, including in the context of adopting response measures of the military-technical nature," Zakharova said.