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Clinton says India, Pakistan face dangerous future

WASHINGTON: President Bill Clinton said on Thursday he will make clear during his upcoming trip to India and Pakistan that they face a "dangerous future" because of their nuclear arms race.

"There are those in the region who hope we will simply accept its nuclear status and move on. I will not do that," Clinton said in videotaped remarks to the Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference in Washington.

Clinton leaves on Saturday for a week-long trip to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

"India and Pakistan have legitimate security concerns," Clinton said. "But I will make clear our view that a nuclear future is a dangerous future for them and for the world."

"And I'll stress that narrowing our differences on nonproliferation is important to moving toward a broader relationship," he said.

Clinton played a personal role in averting a looming war between India and Pakistan in the summer of 1999 over the disputed territory of Kashmir, although he has insisted he is not making this trip to mediate in the dispute.

Clinton will be the first U.S. president to visit the Indian subcontinent in 22 years, since Jimmy Carter went there.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who is accompanying Clinton on the trip, said on Tuesday progress on controlling India's nuclear weapons was essential "before India and the United States can realise fully the vast potential of our relationship."

Most of the week Clinton will spend in India, where he will arrive on Sunday night. He makes a day trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh on Monday. And the Pakistan stop, added after an intense debate within the U.S. government, will only be several hours in Islamabad on March 25 before he flies home.

An October 1999 military coup against a democratically elected government in Pakistan had made Clinton's visit unlikely, but then he and his advisers decided it would be better to go there and preach a message of democracy and nuclear arms control.

The White House has hotly denied comments by coup leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf that Clinton's visit will legitimise his military rule.-Reuters