WASHINGTON, June 21 (UPI) -- The United States should stop demanding Pakistan, India and Israel give up their nuclear weapons, a report said Monday.
The dispute involving India, Pakistan and Israel is known in international non-proliferation circles as the three-state problem because all three are not recognized as nuclear states and yet have resisting efforts to disarm them.
India and Pakistan tested their nuclear devices in May 1998 and since they had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, technically they did not violate any international law.
Israel has not yet tested its devices but is generally perceived as possessing nuclear weapons.
The 95-page report presented at Washington's Carnegie Endowment suggested efforts to make India, Pakistan and Israel join the NPT as non-weapon states are unlikely to succeed.
Instead, the United States should lead a diplomatic initiative to persuade the three states to accepting the nonproliferation obligations already accepted by five recognized nuclear states, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In return for a pledge to prevent further proliferation, the three states should be offered "relief from unproductive, ritualistic hectoring or possible coercion to eliminate their nuclear arsenals before others do," the report said.
