Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday urged nuclear powers to cut their own arsenals and military might or face the dangerous emergence of more budding nuclear states like Iran and North Korea.

Gorbachov said at a lecture organised by the United Nations that the origim of current tensions could be found in the decline in disarmament efforts between the nuclear powers after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Nuclear arms proliferation is a problem that should not just be seen in the context of Iran and North Korea," said the architect of historic cuts in US-Soviet nuclear weaponry in the late 1980s along with late US president Ronald Reagan.

"The root of this problem is the non-implementation by members of the nuclear club of the obligation... to move towards the elimination of nuclear weapons," he added.

"While this situation continues there will be a continued danger of the emergence of nuclear powers."

Steps towards full nuclear disarmament are a requirement of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which the West suspects or accuses Iran and North Korea of violating with their respective nuclear programmes.

The former Soviet president called for a global freeze on nuclear arsenals, which are believed to amount to some 23,000 weapons worldwide according to the United Nations.

Gorbachev also criticised the trend set by US-led military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Absolute security for some means ultimately insecurity for everyone else," said Gorbachev.

"If we do not address the need to demilitarise international politics, to reduce military budgets, to put an end to the development of new weapons, to prevent militarisation of outer space, then the talk of a nuclear weapon-free world will be just a lot of air," he underlined.

The UN Security Council vowed at an unprecedented summit hosted by US President Barack Obama last month to work to stop the spread of atomic weapons and rid the planet of all nuclear arms.