MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is capable of quickly resuming production of short and medium-range nuclear missiles, Russia's rocket forces commander said on Friday.

The Kremlin is pushing to rewrite a Cold War treaty that limits such missiles by including countries other than ex-Soviet nations and the United States.

"If there is a political decision to make such a class of missile, then it is obvious that they will be made in Russia in the near future because we have everything we need," Colonel- General Nikolai Solovtsov was quoted by RIA news agency as saying.

"Today we are in (arms control) agreements so we act strictly within those agreements."

President Vladimir Putin told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this month that Russia would find it difficult to stay in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in December 1987.

That treaty, a milestone in arms control, bound Washington and Moscow to destroy all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of between 500 and 5,500 km (300 to 3,300 miles). It led to the scrapping of 2,692 missiles in total.

Russian military officials and politicians now describe the INF treaty as a Cold War relic because it began life as a bilateral treaty limiting only the United States and Russia, plus most of the successor countries to the Soviet Union.

Putin has said Washington and Moscow should work to push other states, including those near Russia borders, to join the INF treaty.

Other countries such as North Korea, Iran, Israel, India and Pakistan have since started building arsenals of intermediate-range missiles. Although some possess nuclear weapons, none of them is constrained by the INF treaty.

RUSSIA REARMING

Putin has hiked arms spending to restore Russia's military capability after years of neglect during the chaotic 1990s. He says Moscow plans new types of nuclear weapons as part of its wider plan to strengthen its defenses against emerging threats.

The Kremlin has opposed U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in Europe and announced plans to pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty (CFE).

Solovtsov said that by the end of the year, Russia would deploy seven more new, highly mobile Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile systems.

He said Russia had been working on new ways to overcome any possible missile defense shield after the United States, in 2002, withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

"The accent had to be made on creating completely new, effective ways to overcome any anti-missile system," he said.

Russia will test at least five more intercontinental ballistic missiles by the year end as part of a push to develop new types of missile, he said. Russia test fired a new RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile in May.

Russia's air force said on Friday that Tupolev-95MC bombers, known as Bears by NATO pilots, would fire cruise missiles at a range in southern Russia.