Moscow: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is worried that the world is entering a new nuclear arms race mirroring the Cold War weapons build up he helped end.

Bemoaning the slow pace of nuclear arms reduction and the emergence of new nuclear powers such as North Korea, Gorbachev told the Moscow Times yesterday that "we can forget about the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world."
The first major nuclear arms-reduction treaty after the 1991 Soviet collapse, New START, was not signed until 2010. Gorbachev was interviewed on the 25th anniversary of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty he signed with US President Ronald Reagan. The agreement is widely credited with hastening the Cold War`s end. PTI