(Corrects Jung's title to defence minister from foreign minister in paragraph 7. Here is a corrected version.)

By Mark John

OSLO, April 26 (Reuters) - The United States will make a fresh pitch to Russia at a NATO meeting in Oslo on Thursday over its planned missile defence shield in Eastern Europe despite new criticism from Moscow.

NATO nations will also seek at a two-day alliance meeting to convince Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Moscow should back an independence plan for Serbia's Kosovo province.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her NATO counterparts will meet Lavrov three days after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates failed during a trip to Moscow to persuade Russia the shield was not a strategic threat to it.

"There is a lot of suspicion out of the period of the Cold War," Rice told reporters on Wednesday. "It's simply not possible that this could be considered a system that could in any way threaten the Russian strategic deterrent."

Washington angered Moscow with its plan to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic from 2012 to help fend off what it sees as possible attacks by countries such as Iran and North Korea.

It has since tried to allay Russian objections by offering Moscow cooperation. Gates spoke earlier this week of progress but Lavrov said on Tuesday Moscow saw no interest in joining a project it felt had been already pre-determined in Washington.

"It will take a while for the Russians to consider what we discussed," Gates told a joint news conference with German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung in Berlin on Wednesday.

Gates said Washington had offered to allow Russia to come and look at interceptor missiles in Alaska and visit a radar site in California.

"We've made some very far-reaching proposals and I have no doubt that there is some debate in Moscow about how to respond under the circumstances," he said.

SATISFIED

The plan initially unnerved some NATO nations but officials said the 27-nation alliance appeared more satisfied after detailed U.S. presentations last week and that no objections had been raised.

But German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday: "At least six allies, including Germany, raised doubts and critical questions."

Erler is a member of the Social Democrats, part of Chancellor Angela Merkel coalition government and vociferous critics of the planned shield.

He expressed fears the project could harm worldwide disarmament efforts and suggested NATO allies still disagreed on the level of threat.

But Jung, a conservative, supported the plan, telling the news conference with Gates the shield was a purely defensive system and that Russia's concerns were unfounded.

The scope of the U.S. shield would in theory offer protection to most NATO European countries, although analysts say knotty questions remain about who would have the final say on whether to pre-empt a possible attack.

NATO allies must now decide whether they want to pay for smaller shields to plug gaps in the U.S. shield, which would not cover Turkey, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria.

At their meeting NATO ministers will also review peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

The talks on Afghanistan will be closely watched to see if the United States presses demands on reluctant allies to commit more troops to fighting the insurgency.

Violence has been increasing since the usual winter lull and U.S., British and Canadian troops have borne the brunt of it. (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington)

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