India, Pakistan call for recognition as N-powers

Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said yesterday that New Delhi became a "reluctant nuclear power" because of the world's "imperfect non-proliferation order".

He rejected suggestions that the 1998 nuclear tests carried out by his just-installed Hindu nationalist government were "purely a political act aimed at enhancing its status in the world by breaking into the exclusive nuclear club".

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"In a world where weapons of mass destruction are still to be eliminated, nuclear weapons are sadly the ultimate guarantor of a nation's security," Sinha told a seminar in New Delhi.

Indian officials had said in 1998 that the nuclear deterrent was aimed at China -- not Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars and which carried out its own nuclear tests just days after India.

Pakistan's nuclear program is under the spotlight after top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan publicly admitted in early February that he sold nuclear secrets abroad. Khan, considered a national hero, was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri told a separate seminar Thursday in Islamabad that the world should recognise Pakistan, India -- and Israel -- as nuclear powers.

He called for changes in the international Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which restricts nuclear weapons to five states: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

"Some method should be found whether it is through the multilateral arrangements or any other method, if NPT cannot be amended," Kasuri said, according to the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.

Kasuri said the Pakistani government had never proliferated and would never do so as it was fully conscious of its international obligations.

But he said Pakistan "will never freeze or roll back" its nuclear program as it guaranteed national security.

The US imposed sanctions on India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests but lifted many of them when they joined the coalition against terrorism after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Israel has never acknowledged having a nuclear arsenal.