The United States on Monday made new proposals to cooperate with Russia on missile defence in a bid to overcome Moscow`s opposition to its plans for a missile shield in central Europe, the US negotiator said. US Assistant Secretary of State for international security and nonproliferation John Hood said the Russians had agreed to study the new offer during talks in Paris and that a new meeting would be held in Moscow on October 3. "Today we engaged in discussion where we made new proposals for cooperative missile defence activities," Hood told journalists after the day of talks at the Russian embassy in Paris. "We would like to get into a deeper dialogue about what some of these specific elements could be," he said. The talks in Paris were to follow up on a first meeting held in July in Washington on the planned US missile shield that could have a chilling effect on relations between the two former Cold War foes. The United States wants to set up a tracking radar base in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland as part of a shield that it maintains could help thwart potential attacks from Iran or North Korea. Russia has accused Washington of building a "new Berlin Wall" and threatened to re-deploy rockets near the border with Poland if the United States forges ahead with the plan. Moscow says the US defence plan poses a threat to its security and President Vladimir Putin in June proposed using a base in Azerbaijan as an alternative. The US negotiator declined to give details of the proposals put to the Russian side on Monday but said Washington was ready to "take Russian capabilities" in the area of missile defence and include them in its overall plan. "We are trying to use those proposals from President Putin to broaden missile defence cooperation," he said. In Moscow earlier, Putin said he was optimistic that a deal could be reached with the United States to resolve the dispute. "All is not lost and we still have a certain amount of healthy optimism," said Putin, who discussed the issue with US President George W. Bush during a meeting in Sydney, Australia on Friday. US, Russian and Azerbaijani experts are due to examine Putin`s proposal to use the base in Azerbaijan during a meeting on Saturday in Baku. But a senior US military official appeared to pour cold water on the Russian offer, saying the Azerbaijani base was too close to Iran to serve as a replacement for the site in central Europe. The Gabala early warning radar in Azerbaijan could only serve as a complement to the Polish and Czech facilities, said Lieutenant General Henry Obering, the chief of the US missile defence agency. US and Polish officials held talks last week that yielded progress, according to the deputy foreign minister in Warsaw, who said a formal agreement could be signed by year`s end. Rood also traveled to Prague last week for negotiations on the site of the anti-missile radar base.