U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had little to say about the accusations, remarking only that Putin "was very candid."

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he was disappointed by Putin's criticism about NATO expansion. "Who can be worried that democracy and the rule of law is coming closer to somebody's border?" he asked.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the president's speech was not "confrontational" and attributed his blunt words to the sense that the number of conflicts fomented by Washington "was constantly growing" and that international law was being undermined by such actions.

"It is in the interest of the United States, the European Union and other countries that international law is upheld, not further destroyed," Peskov said.

Minutes earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ¡ª whose country holds the European Union's rotating presidency ¡ª had praised Russia, saying it would be a reliable energy supplier to Europe. She called for closer relations between the EU and Moscow to enhance stability on the continent.

"How relations between the EU and Russia evolve will have a crucial impact on how security in the region will develop," Merkel told the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy. The forum is often used as an opportunity for officials to conduct diplomacy in an informal setting.

Russia's reputation as a supplier of natural gas to the West was damaged in the recent past when it halted supplies to Europe through main pipelines crossing Belarus and Ukraine due to pricing disputes with those two countries.

Merkel also said that the international community is determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Tehran needed to accept demands made by the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency, she said.

On the sidelines of the conference, Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani defended his country's nuclear program as peaceful, saying: "We are no threat to our region or other countries," while indicating a willingness to return to negotiations.

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