US wants India to improve N-security

WASHINGTON: The United States wants India to go beyond some of the steps it has taken for the latter’s better nuclear security, according to a senior Obama administration official.

?”We are looking at this opportunity as a chance to highlight steps that India has taken in its own nuclear security to go beyond, perhaps, some of the activities it has done before,” said Laura Holgate, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism and Threat Reduction National Security Council.

She further said that the US would like to see a “deeper bilateral cooperation with India proceed, going forward out of the summit.”

Holgate was part of the interagency panel of senior US government officials previewing the upcoming nuclear summit here on Tuesday.The panel also included Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Gottemoeller, who acknowledged Pakistan’s nuclear security efforts highlighting that the US has a “very solid cooperation with Pakistan on nuclear security.”

Briefing the foreign media, Gottemoeller said that Pakistan has taken mature steps for the safety and security of the nuclear assets. “They have developed their own nuclear security Center of Excellence in recent years, that’s quite a mature capability now,” she said adding that both countries will continue to work together.

Responding to a question, she said, “Our concerns regarding the continuing deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons by Pakistan relate to a reality of the situation. When battlefield nuclear weapons are deployed forward, they can’t represent a nuclear enhancement, they’re a security threat.”

Gottemoeller, however, clarified that the problem was the reality of the situation and not related particularly to any one country. “We found these lessons ourselves out in Europe during the years of Cold War. Wherever battlefield nuclear weapons exist, they represent particular nuclear security problem,” she said adding that it was more difficult to sustain positive control over systems that were deployed forward.