This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.

'Pakistan may let Taliban use its nuclear weapons against India'

Pakistan may let surrogate Taliban use its nuclear weapons to do its "dirty work" against India in the event of escalation of tension between the two South Asian neighbours over Kashmir, a top US non-proliferation expert has suggested.

"If something broke out in Kashmir that reignited the vitriol between India and Pakistan, that could be an incident that could cause someone to make the decision," he warned

"(The Pakistanis may say) We don't want to use these weapons, but we're going to let our surrogate Taliban have access to these weapons and they'll do our dirty work," he said.
"I think one of our recommendations was to work with India and Pakistan to develop some fail-safe procedures," Graham said responding to questions from lawmakers concerned about the safety and security of nuclear weapons in Pakistan.

Although during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union were strong adversaries and had the capability of destroying each other, "we understood that we didn't want to allow a mis-step or an accidental event to become the ignition for such a war", Graham said.
"So we set up the red phone in the Oval Office and a whole protocol," he said referring to the report of the commission released early this year.

Noting that "none of that exists between India and Pakistan", he said: "I have felt that this may be an area in which the US and Russia together, since we developed these protocols for our own benefit and the world's benefit, might work together with India and Pakistan to try to get them to develop."

Graham said he was encouraged that within the last month India and China have started to develop some of those fail-safe procedures.

"But there's almost nothing that has been done in a similar vein between the real adversaries, which are India and Pakistan," he noted.

Pakistan must act in an expeditious and transparent manner against all those responsible for the Mumbai terrorist attack

Taking note of the spike in the 'level of infiltration' in the last few months, Rao added that 'the infrastructure of terrorism and activities of terror groups operating from the territory of Pakistan is a cause of serious concern.' 

Krishna told parliament that India has made it clear to Pakistan to 'take effective action to ban the anti-India activities of organisations such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa and their leaders, including Hafiz Saeed.' They have openly and blatantly espoused an agenda of violence and terrorism against India, Krishna said. 

Pakistan-based groups posed as much threat to the West as they did to India______Chidambaram

“The camps must be closed. Training must come to an end.''

He said it would be “naïve” for Western countries to think that terrorists operating from Pakistan posed a threat to India alone.

“Once you allow these terror groups to train, recruit and build capacity to strike, they can strike in India, they can strike in the U.K., they can strike in Denmark as they were planning out of the Karachi project,” he said.

He added: “No country is truly safe...Don't think that India alone is under threat. Every country is under threat from these groups and the Lashkar-e-Taiba today is like the Al Qaeda, a multi-country group.”

India has been a consistent advocate of complete and universal global nuclear disarmament.

During the recently concluded nuclear security summit, which was attended by both Dr.Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani, Washington stressed on the need of reducing the nuclear stockpile across the globe.
It particularly expressed concerns over the extremist threat looming large over Pakistan's nuclear arsenals.

Dr. Singh, while leaving for Washington for the summit, had said that India has been a consistent advocate of complete and universal global nuclear disarmament.
"We were among the first countries in the world to call for a world free of nuclear weapons. I am encouraged by the fact that this approach is finding greater resonance today. We will continue to call for more meaningful progress in this direction," he had said.

President Obama on Nuclear Summit

President Obama at Opening Plenary of Nuclear Security Summit

Be prepared for a long haul in Afghanistan

"The United States fully recognises that India has legitimate interests in Afghanistan. It appreciates the development work we do there... It appreciates that we are force of stability and moderation in our region. We are not scaling down in Afghanistan," she said.

India has made it clear that it will not be scaling down its operations in Afghanistan notwithstanding a spate of recent attacks targeting its citizens, including the one on two guest houses in central Kabul in which seven Indians were killed.

Nuclear plants need real security

An interest in nuclear power plants by al Qaeda or another terrorist group is not theoretical. Among the targets considered for the 9/11 attacks were nuclear power plants.
Yemeni security forces recently captured a suspected member of al Qaeda, a New Jersey native named Sharif Mobley. Between 2002 and 2008, he worked at several U.S. nuclear power plants. It does not take a counterterrorism expert to imagine what al Qaeda might be able to do with the knowledge supplied by an individual who had spent the better part of six years inside nuclear facilities.

We feel it is vital for the international community to stay the course in Afghanistan.

Despite the provocations we have faced constantly from terrorists whose linkages we have traced back to Pakistani soil, we have not abandoned the path of dialogue,' Rao said in an address Monday at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a renowned Washington think tank. 

India will also not scale down operations in Afghanistan despite terror attacks on its intetests, she said. 'We feel it is vital for the international community to stay the course in Afghanistan.' 

India's approach has been to deal with terrorism with restraint, she said. 'However, our restraint should not be confused with weakness or unwillingness to act against those that seek to harm our people, create insecurity, and hamper our developmental goals. 

'We are a strong country and we possess the capacity to deal effectively with those that pursue destructive agendas against India and its people.

'We have, time and again, made genuine attempts to address outstanding issues, most importantly, the issue of terrorism through dialogue with Pakistan,' she said, referring to her meeting in New Delhi with Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir of Pakistan.

'But it continues to be our conviction that for this dialogue to really make progress, Pakistan should take meaningful steps to address our concerns on terrorism, and cease the encouragement of terrorism targeted against India.'

Rao said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would participate in the Nuclear Security Summit to be hosted by Obama next month. 'We believe the summit can be milestone in addressing the threat of nuclear terrorism.' 

Referring to the latest attacks on Indians in Kabul Feb 26, she said: 'The international community should understand that such attempts, if unchecked, will only embolden the forces that held sway in Afghanistan in the 1990s and caused the tragedy of 9/11.'