MUNICH, Feb 11: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday dismissed a stinging broadside against the United States by Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying: “One Cold War was quite enough.”

Mr Gates, a former CIA director who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, responded with wry humour and a history lesson to President Putin who had portrayed the US in a speech here on Saturday as a dangerous, destabilising world power.

“I have, like your second speaker yesterday, a starkly different background -- a career in the spy business. And I guess old spies have a habit of blunt speaking,” he said. He said the world today was different and more complex than the Cold War.—APP