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Pakistan

no better off

with N-weapons: Clinton

ISLAMABAD: US President Bill Clinton told Pakistan's military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf the nation's nuclear weapons were an expensive waste of money that did not help its people, a senior U.S. official said on Saturday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Pakistan's nuclear weapons "did not make Pakistan a safer place, had not enhanced its deterrence capability and did not make the Pakistani people safer," the official said.

"In fact, embarking on a nuclear arms race (with arch-rival India) was an expensive way to squander the nation's wealth," the official quoted Clinton as telling Musharraf.

The view was at complete odds with Musharraf's that Pakistan had to carry out nuclear tests in May 1998 in response to similar trials by arch-rival India, with which it is in a 52-year dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

The official said Musharraf promised Clinton that Pakistan "would not be the source of any export of weapons of mass destruction", said the official.-Reuters