Vienna - Czech Foreign Minister Karel Scharzenberg said in Vienna on Thursday that he could imagine that the United States would delay its Central European missile shield project, one day after Russia reacted positively to a perceived shift in US policy.

Russia halted plans to deploy Iskander missiles in its European enclave of Kaliningrad on Wednesday, responding to signals that the new Obama administration would review its missile shield project to be stationed in the Czech Republic and Poland.

"They will hardly call it off, but I can imagine a delay," Schwarzenberg told reporters in regard to the plans of the new US administration.

The foreign minister was in Vienna for a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Schwarzenberg welcomed Russia's policy shift and said that in the course of the global economic crisis, the US, Europe and Russia might have discovered "that we have more problems that we must solve jointly, rather than creating new ones."

Russia might have also understood that its announcement last November about its missile deployments "did not benefit Russia's image," Schwarzenberg said. (dpa)