The United States Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, has defended Washington's decision to abandon the Ant-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and told NATO allies that the US will not negotiate a new arms control deal in the present climate.
Addressing a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, Mr Rumsfeld said that any review of the US nuclear strategy would have to take into account the rapidly changing, uncertain security environment.
"Ensuring our security in such an environment will require flexibility and adaptability, which is why we cannot afford to be constrained by new arms agreements," he said.
Mr Rumsfeld met Russia's Foreign Minister, Mr Sergei Ivanov, late on Monday and US and Russian officials will meet next month to discuss a timetable for agreed arms reductions.
President Bush and President Putin have agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals to about 2,000 warheads - in the case of the US, a cut of two thirds.
Mr Ivanov sounded relaxed about the US decision to abandon the ABM treaty, which will allow Washington to develop defensive systems against long-range nuclear missiles. He said that, although Moscow regretted the US decision, it did not represent a threat to Russia's security.
Mr Rumsfeld said that Russia's response to the US decision was evidence of a new mood in relations between the two countries.
"I believe this shows that the US-Russian relationship has matured to the point where we can agree to disagree agreeably on the ABM treaty without allowing those differences to affect progress in other areas of our relationship," he said.
In a separate development, the European Commission has confirmed that the US urged the EU this month against going ahead with a network of navigation satellites that would rival its military Global Positioning System.
A Commission spokesman said the US Defence Department had written to the 15 EU defence ministers warning that future enemies could use the proposed civilian European system, codenamed Galileo, in a war with the West.
"They were considering that in times of conflict, they would have problems because of Galileo," he said.
