MOSCOW, September 21 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's foreign minister suggested Friday that the United States planned to deploy a missile defense radar in the Czech Republic to monitor the European part of Russia.

Moscow vehemently opposes Washington's plans to place a missile interceptor base in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, and considers them a threat to Russia's national security.

Earlier this week, a team of U.S. military experts visited a radar facility rented by Russia in Azerbaijan, which Moscow has offered as an alternative to the planned U.S. missile shield in Central Europe. The specialists held informal technical consultations with their Russian counterparts.

"When our American partners say that Gabala cannot be an alternative to a radar in the Czech Republic, I understand them, because the Gabala radar cannot see Russian territory from its western borders to the Urals, while a radar in the Czech Republic can," Lavrov said in an interview on Rossia TV channel.