Bush "has made very clear that he believes that the job of the commander in chief is to protect the people of the United States from accidental or rogue launch of a ballistic missile," said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.

"The president is going to continue to consult with our allies, consult with Russia, consult with the Chinese, but he has made perfectly plain that he intends to protect our country from any such launch," the official said.

China has cautiously welcomed talks between the United States and Russia on the vexed issue of the planned US missile defense shield, while warning the "global strategic balance" should be maintained.

"Maintaining the global strategic balance and stability is a matter of concern for the security interests of all nations, especially the nuclear declared nations," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said late Friday.

He was responding to questions about talks in Moscow between US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and top Russian military officials.

Rice had been in Moscow in an attempt to persuade Russian officials of the need to move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) accord signed by Washington and Moscow, which bars the United States from building its controversial missile shield.

The US argues the agreement has to be set aside so nations can protect themselves against attack from so-called "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iraq.

Meanwhile in separate developments, UN negotiations on banning biological weapons have been put on hold until November because the United States has rejected a text designed to strengthen that ban, the chairman of the talks said on Monday.

"We have to wait until the November review conference," Hungarian diplomat Tibor Toth told a news conference.

The UN's 1972 Biological Weapons Convention bans the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological weapons, and has been ratified by 143 countries including the United States.

But it is not binding and has no control mechanisms.

It signatories are due on November to examine how well it is being implemented.

For more than six years, a UN working group has been trying to draft an additional text, or protocol, designed to make the convention legally binding.

The draft protocol has been approved by 51 countries and another six say it is an acceptable basis to work from.

But Washington turned it down on July 25, on the grounds it could potentially jeopardise US national security and confidential data on biological defence.

The rejection by the US -- the only country to spurn the text -- caused the current round of negotiation to grind to a halt. They had orignally been scheduled to last until August 17.

Washington's stance provoked angry reactions from other member states, including its traditional allies.

"No country has supported the US conclusions," Toth said.

The US has said that while it is unhappy with the draft protocol as it stands, it supports the 1972 convention and intends to submit new proposals of its own, as yet unspecificied.

Toth warned that many national delegations at the talks felt it was "politically and technically impractical" to implement the protocol unless the US participated.

In that sense, Washington's stance on biological weapons is similar to that it has adopted on worldwide efforts to curb global warming.

In March US President George W. Bush rejected the UN's Kyoto Protocol on climate change as counter to US interests while saying he would offer his own suggestions for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The Bush administration's decision to spurn the climate treaty nearly led to the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol, with several leading industrialised nations saying worldwide efforts to curb global warming would fail unless the US took part.

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