MOSCOW, March 25: Russia's defence minister on Thursday repeated an earlier warning to Nato that he might order a buildup of the country's nuclear defences should the US-led alliance continue to expand and take an unfriendly view of Moscow.

Sergei Ivanov said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was following an aggressive strategy and treating Russia as a threat rather than a partner.

"If Nato continues to keep to its offensive military doctrine, then Russia's military planning and the principles of Russia's military procurement - including in the nuclear sphere - will be adequately reevaluated," the Interfax new agency quoted Mr Ivanov as saying.

"Russia is carefully observing the process of Natos's transformation," said Mr Ivanov, who is seen as one of President Vladimir Putin's closest political allies in government.

He said that some new Nato members both 'directly and indirectly' displayed anti-Russian policies. Russia and Nato have recently come to blows over the alliance's plans to station warplanes in the three Baltic states and former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

All are due to formally join Nato on April 2. Russia had spent years fruitlessly trying to avert the expansion up to its borders and is growing increasingly concerned that the warplanes stationed in the Baltic region will spy on its defences.

The State Duma lower house of parliament spent the day on Thursday drafting a tough new resolution to be issued on the day of the expansion while senior diplomats said they mostly feared that Nato would only continue to grow.

"The majority of the population of our country sees Nato expansion as a threat to Russia," the Duma's security committee chief Vladimir Vasilyev told Interfax.

Meanwhile Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Chizhov said Russia was concerned because "this is not the first and obviously not the last wave." The Russian defence minister's tough comments on potential nuclear weapons expansion on Thursday are almost exactly the same that he made on October 2 in remarks that startled Western nations. -AFP