Moscow angered by US plan to site long-range missiles in Germany

Military scheme agreed to by Nato called serious threat', while weapons experts warn of new arms race risked

A US announcement of a plan to station long-range missiles in Germany for the first time since the cold war has set off a diplomatic furore between Washington and Moscow and elicited comparisons to the European missile crises of the 1980s.

Russian and US officials both accused each other of provoking the escalation on Thursday, as arms control experts warned that the deployments of missiles on the European continent, after the collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, could fuel a new arms race.