(WARSAW) - The US decision to install a missile shield in Poland is a "very dangerous game," which had upset the military balance between Washington and Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

"Poland appears not to have understood that it has become a party to a very dangerous game," Lavrov said in an interview to the Polska daily ahead of his visit to Warsaw on Thursday.

"The balance between the military potential of Moscow and Washington has been upset by the United States," he said.

In Warsaw, Lavrov is expected to meet with Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

It is the first visit by a senior Moscow official to an EU member nation since the outbreak of the Georgia crisis on August 8.

Lavrov said Poland agreed to the US missile shield as "revenge" on Russia after Moscow's military action in Georgia.

"This means Poland took revenge on us for defending the Ossetians. This is rather small-minded behaviour as well as a political mistake," Lavrov said.

Warsaw and Washington signed a preliminary deal on August 14 to base part of a US missile shield in Poland, in the face of Moscow's vehement opposition and mounting East-West tensions over Georgia.

Washington plans to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland plus a radar facility in the neighbouring Czech Republic by 2011-2013 to complete a system already in place in the United States, Greenland and Britain.

The US insists the shield, endorsed by all 26 NATO member states earlier this year, is to fend off potential missile attacks by "rogue states", notably Iran and is not aimed in any way against Russia.

Moscow, however, regards it as a grave threat to its national security and on Wednesday threatened to target planned US missile shield sites in Europe. Head of Russia's strategic missile forces General Nikolai Solovtsov, said if Washington sets up the planned installations in Central Europe, the Kremlin would ensure that Russia's vast nuclear arsenal remained effective.

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