Russia will not seek a new cold war against the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Asked whether the foreign policy part of his annual address to parliament on Wednesday meant Russia-West relations were getting strained, Putin said, "we don't need this. We need a normal, acceptable environment for our foreign policy development. We need nothing else."

"We will be building our relations with our Western partners in a patient and calm manner. I have already said in my address that we will not return to the cold war period. I specially added in my address: either in our policy or in our defense strategy," Putin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

"If we don't poke our nose into somebody else's business and don't declare the whole world a zone of our influence, our available resources are quite sufficient for us to ensure our own security, to build absolutely reliable guarantees for our security despite any long-term projects they may be talking about," Putin said.

Putin said in his annual Address to the Parliament on Wednesday that "we must always be ready to repel potential aggression from outside and to counter international terrorist attack. We must be able to respond to attempts from any quarters to put foreign policy pressure on Russia, including with the aim of strengthening one's own position at our expense."

(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2006)