Mikhail Gorbachev, the former President of the Soviet Union, whose glasnost (openness) policy initiated the end of the Cold War, has delivered an attack on the Government over its decision to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent.

In a letter to The Times today , Mr Gorbachev writes: “The UK Government’s rush to deploy nuclear missiles whose service life would extend until 2050 is, to say the least, astonishing.” He says that a responsible course of action would be to postpone the decision on the future of the UK nuclear arsenal “at least until the next review of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty” in 2010.

Mr Gorbachev adds that deploying new nuclear missiles “would be in contradiction with the spirit of the agreements that helped to end the Cold War”. He is writing in his capacity as chairman of the board of Green Cross International, an environmental organisation that he founded in 1993.

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