Speaking at the Military Academy of General Staff, at the end of a tense two-day visit to Moscow, Gates said there would be no US bases in either Georgia or Ukraine.

The Pentagon would not station troops there ""even if we were to be invited," Gates told Russian officers.

The issue is of high sensitivity in Moscow, which has seen its longtime dominance of neighbouring countries severely diminished since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Both Georgia and Ukraine now have pro-Western leaderships that desire to join NATO.

However, Gates criticised Moscow's weapons sales, accusing Iran of having "made no secret of its expansionist ambitions," and claiming that Syria is a conduit for weapons to the Lebanese guerrillas in Lebanon.

"The best way to describe it, is that at the end we decided to agree to disagree," Gates said of the issue, which was raised during meetings with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov and other officials.

His speech came at the end of a visit dominated by a bitter US-Russian dispute over US missile defence plans which is unsettling bedrock arms control regimes that helped stabilise Europe during the Cold War.

In a conciliatory tone, Gates said that "no nation suffered more from the last century's carnage and miscalculations than Russia."

"And today, arguably no nation stands to gain more from this century's possibilities," he said. "We are prepared to work with Russia -- and with the Russian military -- to try to turn possibility into reality for the peoples of both nations."

During talks here, in which he was accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gates offered what he called "new ideas" for Russian participation in a regional missile defence system to protect both Russia and the West from ballistic missile attack.

They included joint monitoring of missile early warning data and the stationing of Russian liaison officers at missile defence sites in the United States and Americans at sites in Russia, senior US officials said.

Gates said Friday that cooperation at that level would represent a significant strategic shift in military relations between the United States and Russia.

US officials said Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared interested in the proposal, and the two sides have agreed to continue technical discussions.

But in his only public exchange with Rice and Gates, Putin gave no indication that Russia intends to change course on missile defence or other arms control issues.

These include a Russian threat to suspend participation on December 12 in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty which sets limits on troops and tanks in Europe.

Putin also warned that Russia may not be able to continue to abide by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty which abolished shorter and medium range nuclear missiles in Europe.

In his speech, Gates chose to ignore those disputes, and instead emphasise that the two countries confront similar security challenges.

Gates recounted that the US military, which transformed itself into a high tech force during its Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, has had to adapt to a different kind of conflict.

"Since September 11 (2001), the US military has been confronted with new missions in Iraq and AFghanistan -- where initially quick conventional victories have given way to long, complex and grinding campaigns against violent, adaptive insurgencies," he said.

"Though our nations and our militaries are in very different places today, we do face many of the same challenges," he said.

Gates said he wanted to create "a climate of trust and transparency as our countries take on some of the thornier geopolitical issues of the day."

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