External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday warned that proliferation with the "attendant" risk of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists is now the "greatest" in Asia.
"This is particularly so in the immediate neighbourhood of India, where it is possible to find the conjunction of authoritarian rule, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, drug trafficking and weapons of mass destruction," he said delivering a lecture at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore on the theme 'Asia -- A Period of Change'.
Sinha, who is on a short visit to the city-state, said, "Some of the most deliberate and well-documented instances of nuclear and missile transfers have taken place in this (Asian) region."
Referring to Monday's twin blasts in Mumbai, he said India's commercial capital was chosen because what the terrorists and their sponsors envy the most is India's success in the economic field.
He said the relative stability that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has enjoyed over the last few decades has also been shattered by the rise of terrorist forces.
"A harsh, militant, puritanical form of Islam brought in by outsiders, preying on a false sense of victimisation is threatening to displace Southeast Asia's Islamic tradition of syncretism and coexistence."
Recalling the bombings in Bali and Jakarta, Sinha said the discovery of expansive networks of terrorist organisation in that region has revealed the scale of the threat in Asia.
Replying to questions after the lecture on the Mumbai blasts, he said, "We have fought this battle and we are determined to win this war. Investigations are going on.
"I will not like to prejudge the investigations. There are certain patterns that link it to international terrorist groups but the best for me is to announce after we have evidence."
Sinha called on Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and held wide-ranging talks with his counterpart S Jayakumar.
The Singaporean leaders, while expressing sympathies to the families of the victims, extended their cooperation to India for countering terrorism.
