Click to play videoNew Delhi: Signalling a radical departure from Pakistan's nuclear doctrine, President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday said his country will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in case of conflict in South Asia and expressed readiness to accept a South Asian Non-Nuclear Treaty.
"Pakistan will not be the first one to use a nuclear weapon. We would not, in fact, want to use it ever. I am against nuclear warfare altogether. Most definitely. We hope we will never get into that position (of using nuclear weapons). I am for a South Asian Non-nuclear Treaty," he said.
Both India and Pakistan are nuclear weapon states. India announced a no-first-use policy soon after the 1998 nuclear tests. Zardari was addressing the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in Delhi via video-conferencing from Islamabad.
Zardari also made an impassioned plea for better relations between India and his country saying the ethos of the two nations was intertwined.
"There is an Indian in every Pakistani and a Pakistani in very Indian. It's a conflict within whether we speak as an Indian or as a Pakistani," he said.
"In the first time in Pakistan's history we have a Parliament that is predisposed to friendly relations with India," Zardari added, saying that the two countries should not be threatened by each other.
Zardari also said he would like to sit down with US President-elect Barack Obama to discuss strategy to tackle terror. Meanwhile, on Pakistan's northwestern borders, US missile strikes are continuing.
On Saturday, a strike reportedly killed two top al-Qaeda operatives in the North Waziristan area. One of them is Rashid Rahuf - the mastermind behind the plot to use liquid bombs to blow up planes flying from London's Heathrow airport to America.
British Pakistani Rauf's plot has forever changed the rules of aviation security, with a ban on carry fluids and gels - even drinking water - on board aircraft across the world. He was related to Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the Jaish-e-Muhammad who was released by India during the Kandahar hijacking nine years ago.
They, along with five others, were killed when when two US missiles struck this morning at the house of a tribesman, Khaleed Noor. There have been over 20 US missile attacks in the past two weeks from Afghanistan in the area.
(With inputs from agencies)
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