Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed to NATO leaders that Europe be divided into sectors of military responsibility to better protect the continent from missile attack, reports said Monday.

Medvedev did not go into details over the plan at the NATO summit at the weekend but Russian newspapers quoted officials as saying it would see Russia taking responsibility for one sector and NATO the other.

But analysts cast doubt on the plan, saying that although Russia could help shield Europe by deflecting potential missile threats from Iran and North Korea, the scheme was hardly workable in practice.

The president said at the NATO summit that Moscow was prepared to work with the alliance on missile defence, as the two sides sought to put an end to decades of Cold War-era suspicion.

But sources told the Kommersant newspaper that the scheme, proposed at closed-door talks, would help NATO and Russia create a joint missile defence system without having to merge their missile systems and divulge secrets.

"Medvedev's initiative can be briefly laid out as follows: Moscow is ready to shoot down any object heading to Europe through our territory or our sector of responsibility," Kommersant quoted an unidentified senior diplomat as saying.

"That is literally to defend countries located to the west of Russia."

"Equally NATO should take upon itself similar responsibilities in its sector or sectors: if someone decides to strike at us through Europe -- everything that will fly should be shot down by Americans or NATO members."

The official did not say whether Russia's sector would be limited to its own territory or could extend further west, such as to ex-Soviet states.

Kommersant said the plan, if realised, could mark the first major joint project ever between Russia and the alliance.

General Nikolai Makarov, the Russian armed forces' chief of staff, said the proposal would see Russia taking responsibility for one sector and NATO the other.

"This means that every country takes upon itself responsibility for certain part of territory," Makarov told AFP at the summit at the Portuguese capital Lisbon.

Medvedev had made an oblique reference to the plan in his news conference at the end of the summit, saying Russia had offered the "creation of the so-called sectoral missile defence" and it required further analysis.

"The reaction was positive and we did not expect more," Kommersant quoted Medvedev's top foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko as saying. "It could not be (described as) rapture but it it was not negative either."

Kremlin's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin, writing on his page on Twitter micro-blog, described the plan as one of "the two knights, who stand back-to-back defending themselves from attacks."

But analysts warned that the plan risked being nothing more than a pipe dream as Russia's defence industry was no longer keeping up with the West.

"It is simply meaningless to speak of the missile defense system on equal terms," said independent security analyst Alexander Golts.

Igor Korotchenko, editor of the monthly journal Natsionalnaya Oborona (National Defense), warned the practical realisation of the plan was hardly feasible.

"There was a lot of good, beautiful ideas but there are so many discrepancies in a practical sense that they can bury the entire idea," he told AFP.

NATO is likely to rely upon the US programme known as the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System and Russia has nothing at the moment to match that, Korotchenko said, adding Moscow can only make itself useful by providing information about missile launches from radar stations like Gabala station in Azerbaijan.

Even when Russia's S-500 air defense system is ready, it will hardly be compatible with Europe's and NATO would never agree to place elements of its anti-missile shield in Russia, Korotchenko added.