"But at the same time we, as the friends, allies and partners of the United States, should be in a position to say to them that while doing that, don't re-launch a new arms race," he said, speaking through a translator.

Two months ago, President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, signed a pact to cut their arsenal of deployed nuclear warheads.

But Putin has faced criticism at home for giving in to Washington's insistence that decommissioned warheads may be kept in storage instead of being destroyed.

He has also been forced to accept Bush's determination to scrap the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty - long seen in Russia as a cornerstone of nuclear stability.

Gorbachev, whose reforms in the late 1980s helped pave the way for an end to the Cold War, is lobbying for funds to help tackle the environmental consequences of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons left by the Soviet empire.

He said there were some 200 submarines, now out of use, that still held nuclear reactors that had to be disposed of.

"We are still dealing with the consequences of the old arms race, without starting a new one," he said.