Pak dismisses India's call to secure nuke assets

Pakistan on Saturday dismissed India's call to effectively secure its nuclear assets as 'self serving' and said New Delhi should instead work with it on establishing a 'regional strategic restraint regime'.

Following a suicide attack on Friday outside the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex at Kamra, considered a base for some of the country's strategic weapons, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao had said that India hoped the Pakistan government would "continue to take steps to effectively secure their nuclear assets".

Responding to a question on Rao's comments, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit today said, "Such remarks are evidently self-serving and integral to India's efforts to seek unilateral advantage, at the cost of regional strategic stability, by its feverish militarisation and working on dangerous military doctrines.

"Instead of finger pointing, India should accept our proposal for promoting a regional strategic restraint regime and working with Pakistan to promote strategic stability in South Asia," he said.

Basit said India should "stop its opportunistic propaganda against Pakistan".

Suggestions about the restraint regime were made to Rao, during her recent meeting with her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York, Basit claimed.

He added that Pakistan had "refrained from commenting on India's own record on nuclear safety and security and its overt and covert endeavours to build weapons of mass destruction".