MOSCOW, May 12: Russia faces security threats that make the Cold War look like ‘child’s play’, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Friday in the second high-level call this week for a military build-up.

Mr Ivanov, seen as a Kremlin favourite to replace Mr Putin as president in 2008, said Russia needed more modern armed forces to confront such dangers as terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which include nuclear, biological and chemical arms.

“These threats are more important than during the time of the Cold War. The threats that there might have been then were child’s play in comparison with what there is now,” Mr Ivanov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

“Terrorists are doing everything to get access to WMD,” Mr Ivanov said, ITAR-TASS reported. Speaking on the same day that President Vladimir Putin sacked more than a dozen senior officials in law enforcement agencies, Mr Ivanov blasted corruption in the military’s arms procurement programmes.

He also echoed Mr Putin’s warning on Wednesday that Russia must compete in a new, high-tech arms race.

“Russia needs modern strategic nuclear forces. We will not only keep, but perfect our nuclear triad,” Mr Ivanov was quoted as saying by Interfax in reference to the air, sea, and land-based nuclear forces.

Mr Ivanov placed a strong military at the heart of Russia’s economic development, saying that ‘Russia spreads across 10 time zones and without an effective armed forces we cannot protect our military, political and economic interests’.

“The stronger our economy is, the stronger the armed forces, and vice versa. These things are linked,” he was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS.

Russia is flush with oil and gas revenues and the government is promising significant spending increases for the military.

Mr Ivanov denied, however, that Russia is taking a more aggressive stance.

“We are not threatening anyone,” he said, ITAR-TASS reported. “It’s enough to look at the military budgets of Russia, the United States, Great Britain and France to get an answer to the question of who is militarist.”

Mr Putin used his state of the nation speech on Wednesday to call on Russia to compete with what he called the US ‘fortress’.

Mr Putin said that the United States was spending 25 times more on defence and ‘it means that we must build our house strongly, reliably, because we see what’s going on in the world’.

Mr Putin also referred to the United States as ‘comrade wolf’.

Mr Ivanov took aim at Washington, criticising what he said were discussions at the Pentagon on converting strategic nuclear-armed missiles to carry conventional explosives — a weapon that would allow Washington to target anywhere in the world within minutes.

“All this does not strengthen global stability,” Mr Ivanov said.

He vowed to fight corruption by setting up a new civilian-run arms procurement agency next year. “It will handle hundreds of billions of roubles a year. This is a serious anti-corruption step. People in uniform should decide what to buy and not who from,” he said.

Russia’s armed forces are more than a million strong, not including the huge interior ministry forces, secret services and other armed departments, according to chief of staff General Yury Baluyevsky.—AFP