President Putin threatened to trigger a new military confrontation between Russia and the West yesterday over American plans to establish a missile defence system in Europe.

He announced that Russia could withdraw from a landmark arms-control treaty negotiated at the end of the Cold War, pointing to the US proposals as evidence of Nato’s failure to abide by its terms.

Mr Putin’s hawkish comments drew an immediate rebuff from Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, who dismissed Russian fears over the missile defence system as ludicrous.

“The Russians have thousands of warheads. The idea that somehow you can stop the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn’t make sense,” Dr Rice told reporters in Norway before a Nato meeting with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister.

Mr Putin cranked up the war of words between Moscow and Washington over the missile defence system in what appeared to be a strategy to create divisions between the US and its European partners at the Nato-Russia summit.

He bluntly accused Nato of failing to honour the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and said that Russia would suspend its obligations in response.

“It would be appropriate to announce a moratorium on Russian adherence to this treaty until it has been ratified by all Nato countries without exception,” Mr Putin told parliament in his annual State of the Union address.

“Our partners are conducting themselves incorrectly, to say the least, gaining one-sided advantages. They are using the complicated situation to expand military bases near our borders. Moreover, they plan to locate elements of a missile defence system in the Czech Republic and Poland.”

The US wants to base a warning radar in the Czech Republic and ten interceptor missiles in Poland, arguing that the system will guard against rocket attacks from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.

The strength of Mr Putin’s criticisms caught Nato by surprise. Its Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to the treaty and said that he would ask Mr Lavrov for an explanation.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister, called for open dialogue to “prevent a spiral of misunderstanding between Russia and the United States”.

The CFE treaty was signed between Nato and the former Warsaw Pact of Eastern bloc countries. It limited the size of armies and the amount of military hardware permitted in Europe. A revised agreement in Istanbul in 1999 limited deployments on a country-by-country basis to reflect the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.

Nato states have refused to ratify it until Moscow honours commitments to withdraw troops from the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova. Mr Putin has rejected any link between the two issues.

He told parliament that it was an anachronism for Russia to be restricted in deploying its armed forces within its borders as it saw fit. “It is hard to imagine that anyone would restrict the United States, for example, in moving its troops around its own territory,” he said.

In his final annual address to parliament, Mr Putin claimed that foreign interests were trying to destabilise Russia before parliamentary elections in December and the contest to choose his successor as President next March.

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