MOSCOW, Sept 8 (AFP) - Russia warned Wednesday it could carry out pre-emptive strikes on "terrorist bases" across the region as it stepped up security after the country's worst hostage crisis.
Chief of Staff General Yury Baluyevsky also said ominously that Russia would not revert to the use of its massive nuclear arsenal to fight terror in a comment that perplexed some observers.
"Military steps are an extreme measure in the fight against terrorism," Baluyevsky said after talks with US General James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe.
"Our position on preemptive strikes has been stated before, but I will repeat it. We will take steps to liquidate terror bases in any region -- but this does not mean that we will resort to the use of nuclear force," he said.
Interfax news agency earlier erroneously quoted Baluyevsky as speaking of the elimination of terrorist bases "in any region of the world," but his remarks instead referred to the Caucasus, central Asia and other areas near Russia.
Russia, embroiled in a five-year guerrilla war in rebel Chechnya, has so far only dropped a few bombs on the restless Panskisi Gorge in neighboring Georgia, where it suspects some of the Chechn rebels are training and hiding.
But it has never before suggested it could launch pre-emptive attacks in other regions of the world, although two Russian secret service agents were handed life sentences this year for assassinating a Chechen rebel leader who had moved from Chechnya to Qatar.
The general's comments came during the first visit to Russia by Jones, who stressed the two former Cold War era foes had entered a new friendly relationship since the September 11 attacks, and that this bond only grew stronger after the seizing of the school in the southern town of Beslan.
"We face common threats and common challenges," said Jones. "We are entering a period of heightened cooperation against these threats and this is very, very important."
At least 336 civilians and rescue and security workers, along with 31 hostage takers, died in the three-day siege in North Ossetia bordering Chechnya, which Jones called an "insidious attack."
Just like before the launch of the US-led attack on Afghanistan that Russia supported in October 2001, the two generals said the Beslan attack should redouble the two sides' efforts to fight terror.
"Today international terrorism has become an international force and only through joint action (with NATO) can we fight this scourge," Baluyevsky said.
He said the two sides agreed to exchange information on terror cells around the world and to coordinate a rapid response team to fight them.
Meanwhile, Russia and NATO tried hard in public to skirt an issue that had riled their relations before the Chechen-linked attacks on Russia -- NATO's military expansion into the former Soviet Baltic states.
Jones said NATO had no plans to build permanent bases in the region, but did not rule out the possibility that more Western troops may be stationed there soon.
"The truth is there are no plans to build bases to the east of the existing NATO bases that are already stationed there," Jones said.
"We do not plan to station a huge number of troops east of these bases."