Statements in the Senate by Director of the CIA George Tennet and other senior U.S. intelligence figures about Russia as an adversary of the United States "contain nothing new."

The message is that, as during the height of the Cold War, the United States "is today in a state of mutual nuclear intimidation with Russia," Sergei Rogov, director of Russia's Institute of United States and Canada Studies, told Interfax.

"No fundamental changes have taken place" in Russian-U.S. relations over the ten post-Cold War years, Rogov said. "As before, the American nuclear potential is primarily aimed against Russia and the Russian one against the United Sates."

So the Soviet-U.S. Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 remains a "strategic stability" factor, Rogov said.

U.S. leaders have said "openly" for many years that the main threat to the United States comes from Russian and Chinese ballistic missiles, but chiefly Russian ones because Russia's nuclear missile potential "is far bigger than the Chinese one."

North Korea, Iran and Iraq are seen as a "possible, potential threat," Rogov said.

That is the reason why the U.S. national missile defense plans, "under the pretext of defense against the threat of ballistic missiles, are evoking a harsh and negative reaction in the Russian Federation and China."

The so-called "rogue states" are a "nonexistent threat in real terms." The national missile defense "will above all be aimed against Russia and China and not against a potential threat from North Korea, Iraq or Iran."

Statements by American intelligence chiefs are evidence that the new administration of President George W. Bush is sticking to the line of the previous administration of Bill Clinton, seeing Russia and China as "the only real threat" to the United States, Rogov said.

U.S. exaggerates Russian threat - Political scientist

MOSCOW. Feb 8 (Interfax) - A statement by the Director of the CIA George Tennet, that space offensive systems will appear in Russia by 2015, has not been made without a motive, Vyacheslav Nikonov, president of the fund Politika, believes.

He said in an interview with Interfax on Thursday that such remarks "are very typical for American intelligence, which for the last half century of its existence has constantly exaggerated the scale of the threat stemming from the Soviet Union."

As for possible Russian means of deterring American space-based systems, these fears of the American side could be justified, Nikonov believes. "We would hardly create offensive space systems, but to create the means of hitting the space systems of another country does not seem to be hard at all. More than that, they [the means] already exist," the scientist said.

"Obviously, Tennet is absolutely right regarding our nuclear missile potential as the main threat for America," Nikonov continued, recalling that Russian missiles "in general are the only [means] capable of destroying the U.S. today."

But yet another confirmation of this by the CIA director is "an absolute banality among the top American strategic leadership, in no way indicates a cooling off period in relations between our countries," the scientist said.

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