Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato secretary general, discussed missile defence with the Financial Times and its sister paper FT Deutschland, in a conversation that made clear his conviction that Europe should establish its own system to complement Washington’s.

Although Mr de Hoop Scheffer did not want to enter into specifics about how many European countries would be covered by the US’s own missile defence programme, he argued that the threat to the continent was indisputable and could be countered by a European-wide system.