Since an air crash in Russia in April killed president Lech Kaczynski and scores of the Polish elite, ties between Moscow and Warsaw have experienced a renaissance with pledges of mutual assistance and cooperation.

Despite the sudden improvement in ties, Polish and US officials unveiled on Wednesday the first battery of US surface-to-air Patriot-type missiles to be stationed on Polish soil, at a base just 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the Russian border.

"This was a project which was inherited from the previous state of the Russian-Polish relations," said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament.

"And now that these relations look principally different, this deployment looks an obvious dissonance and I hope that Poland distinctly realizes this today," he said in televised remarks.

Kosachev said he would raise the issue with his Polish colleagues when the foreign affairs committees of the two countries' parliaments meet for the first time Thursday.

The Russian delegation is also to meet Poland's interim president Bronislaw Komorowski Friday, he said.

"The Patriots in no way fit the current logic, the current spirit of the Russian-Polish relations which have a real chance of normalization."

The move "significantly undermines the climate of trust which seems to be starting to emerge between Russia and the United States, Russia and NATO."

A foreign ministry official, speaking on conditions of anonymity earlier in the day, expressed the same sentiment.

"Such actions do not fit the current level of our ties, do not lead to the strengthening of stability in this region but on the contrary decrease trust and predictability," he told AFP.

"It is unclear why such a region located in the immediate proximity to the Russian border has been found for the deployment and where, as far as we know, there are no objects of military infrastructure."

The missiles will be stationed at a military base at Morag, which is just 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the border with Russia's Kaliningrad territory.

"We have repeatedly raised the issue with the Americans and the Poles but have not received real answers to our questions."

Up to 150 US troops based in Kaiserslautern, Germany, are to service the battery in Poland and train Polish soldiers to operate it.

Washington says the missiles will serve to ward off a potential long-range missile threat from Iran.

Russia and the United States have over past months sought to improve ties damaged under the previous US administration but Washington has also said its "reset" ties with Moscow will not hurt relations with east European allies like Poland.

The Polish presidential jet crashed as it tried to land near Smolensk, western Russia ahead of a memorial ceremony in the nearby Katyn forest for thousands of Polish officers executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940.

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