The Bush administration faced widespread criticism on Wednesday over new Pentagon proposals to remove nuclear warheads from 'active duty' without actually destroying them.

The policy change announced on Wednesday followed President George W. Bush's campaign commitment to reduce unilaterally the US nuclear stockpile from around 6,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,000 over the next 10 years.

The Bush administration has portrayed the cuts as a way to establish a new post-Cold War relationship with Russia, at the same time as abandoning the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty to allow the development of missile defence systems.

However, Wednesday's proposals confirmed that the administration is not prepared to cut the number of warheads, but intends instead to remove them from active duty and hold them in reserve.

Policy analysts from the libertarian Cato Institute and the more centrist Brookings Institution said the proposals sent the wrong message on nuclear arms reductions.

Charles Pena, senior defence analyst at the Cato Institute, said: This is an accounting sleight of hand, bad arms control, and bad policy.

If the US retains more weapons, so will Russia. And the Chinese will likely view the entire US strategic arsenal, not just deployed weapons, as a threat and react accordingly.

Ivo Daalder, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the policy proposals were disappointing in the light of the military tensions between India and Pakistan, which are both nuclear powers.

He said: The message that one implicitly sends to countries like India and Pakistan is: If you want to be truly secure, having nuclear weapons and maintaining them in large numbers is a good idea.

We should have tried to send the message that President Bush as a presidential candidate tried to send, that nuclear weapons are becoming increasingly marginal in the way we conduct foreign and defence policy.

However the Pentagon insisted on Wednesday that the proposed shift in policy would have a direct impact on reducing US reliance on nuclear weapons and would prompt Russia to follow suit.

JD Crouch, assistant secretary of defence for international security policy, said: The important fact is that we are actually taking weapons off of the operationally deployed force. This is the force that could be or would be used in an extreme situation, and consequently I think that is a very positive benefit. I believe in fact the Russians will be doing a very similar thing.