Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton held talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov, the official said.

"They are continuing our discussion of non-proliferation issues," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The official declined to comment further on the meeting but a second official said details might be available after US President George W. Bush delivers his State of the Union Address to Congress later Tuesday.

Bush is expected to at least briefly raise the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the speech and urge further non-proliferation efforts.

The Bolton-Mamedov talks began shortly after the Russian foreign ministry released a highly critical statement accusing the United States of destabilizing the international arms control regime.

"The US approach to disarmament issues in many areas is complicating the situation and unsettling the international legal system," the foreign ministry said.

The statement highlighted a speech by US Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton at the UN disarmament conference in Geneva last week in which he said Washington's policy on the issue would be "simply pro-American."

Stressing the support by "an overwhelming majority of countries" at the Geneva conference for negotiations to prevent an arms race in space, Russia charged that "only the US sees no need for them."

US President George W. Bush announced on December 13 that Washington will withdraw from the 1972 arms-control accord to pursue a missile defence project free from the constraints imposed by the treaty, a move described by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as "a mistake."

Since then Moscow has avoided a confrontation with Washington in favour of talks aimed at redefining their strategic relations.

The foreign ministry statement also criticized the United States for being reluctant to forge ahead with nuclear weapons reductions under the START II treaty also signed by Moscow and Washington.

Among other US positions on disarmament that Moscow considers flawed, the statement listed Washington's "refusal to ratify a comprehensive ban on nuclear tests," and its shunning of talks on banning chemical weapons.

Russian and US defence officials held a first round of talks on nuclear weapons cuts in Washington earlier this month but these ended in disagreement after the United States confirmed that it wanted to store rather than destroy decommissioned warheads.

Bush has offered to cut the US strategic nuclear arsenal from around 6,000 warheads to as low as 1,700 warheads, while Russia has said it is prepared to slash the Russian nuclear arsenal to 1,500 warheads.

A further source of friction is Washington's reluctance to sign a written treaty, where Russia wants a signed agreement with enforcement mechanisms.

But with a further round of talks due to begin in Washington this week, a defence ministry official noted that Russian military leaders were not contemplating "either a symmetric or an asymmetric" response to the US move to abrogate the ABM treaty.

"We have two or three years in which to appraise the situation and prepare our response. Since a missile defence system cannot be put in place before 2010, why take action now for something that may not be necessary?" Deputy Defence Minister Alexei Moskovsky said.

AFP correspondent Bernard Besserglik in Moscow contributed to this report.

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