Vladimir Putin demanded that the US cancel its plans to site missiles in Eastern Europe today as he threatened to tear up one of the key nuclear treaties that ended the Cold War.

Relations between Russia and the West took another turn for the worse as the Russian President began talks in Moscow with Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, and Robert Gates, Defence Secretary, by launching into a tart monologue.

The US officials were visibly taken aback as Mr Putin ridiculed their proposed missile defence scheme, suggesting a missile station on the moon may be next on their agenda.

Little progress was made during today’s talks which covered future missile treaties, the political future of Kosovo and sanctions against Iran.

The main issue of contention was the US missile defence shield planned for Eastern Europe. The Russian Government sees the plan as weakening its power in the region.

Anatoly Serdyukov, the Russian Defence Minister, claimed that although the initial missile deployment would be small there was a potential threat to Moscow.

“The principal thing to which we did not agree today is the deployment of anti-missile elements which have an anti-Russian character and which are to be placed in Europe,” he said.

The Pentagon plans to place ten missiles in Poland designed to intercept long-range weapons that could be fired from Iran or North Korea. Those missiles would be guided by a radar system installed in the Czech Republic.

The Kremlin has suggested that the US use the Russian-operated early warning radar in Azerbaijan instead, but US officials said it only offered a broad view of the horizon, and not the narrow focus of the proposed Czech radar.

US officials said they made several detailed proposals to ease Russian concerns that the system would be aimed at Moscow, but they were unable to convince Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, or Mr Serdyukov.

Ms Rice said the ideas that she and Mr Gates presented, such as allowing a Russian observer to monitor the east European radar system, were “conceptual at this point” and would be handed to experts to consider further.

“I know that we don’t always see eye-to-eye on every element of the solutions to these issues, nonetheless, I believe we will do this in a constructive spirit, that we will make progress during these talks as we continue to pursue cooperation,” Ms Rice said. The two sides agreed to meet again in Washington in about six months.

President Putin had warned before the talks that the US should not to labour their desire for the missile shield. “We hope that in the process of such complex and multi-faceted talks you will not be forcing forward your relations with the eastern European countries,” he said.

As well as refusing to co-operate with the proposals for the missile defence system, the Russian President threatened to abandon the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which was signed by Ronald Reagan, then US President, and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.

Mr Putin says the treaty should now be scrapped, raising the spectre of a new arms race as Russia could respond to the ten interceptor missiles planned for Poland with more weapons of its own.

The Kremlin says that unless the treaty is expanded to include more than just the two countries it will become obsolete.

“We need to convince other [countries] to assume the same level of obligation as assumed by the Russian Federation and the United States,” Mr Putin said. “If we are unable to obtain such a goal . . . it will be difficult for us to keep within the framework of the treaty in a situation where other countries do develop such weapon systems, and among those are countries located in our near vicinity.”

US optimism before the talks was short-lived. In a press conference this morning Mr Putin was in aggressive mood joking that that the two countries might “sometime in the future decide that some anti-missile defence system should be established somewhere on the moon".

Mr Lavrov’s attitude was similar even before the meetings had begun - asked whether he thought there would be any breakthroughs during the meetings he said: “Breaks, definitely. Through or down, I don’t know.”

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