LONDON, June 27: The UK would be pleased if India and Pakistan joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but the government at the same time was also “conscious of the respective views of the two countries on the matter.”

A senior official of the Foreign Office while briefing the media here on the context and timing of Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett’s talk on disarmament on Monday in Washington said the foreign secretary wanted to see the membership of the NPT eventually become universal.

Answering a question the official said while Israel had not yet officially acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons the UK hoped that it would join the proposed Nuclear Weapon Free Middle East Zone when and if such a zone is set up.

The senior official said the foreign secretary’s talk did not herald a new nuclear non-proliferation policy of the UK to synchronise with the change of guard at the 10 Downing Street.

“The foreign secretary was reiterating the UK’s policy on the issue with the hope that international disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation efforts would be reignited as she felt that the time was now ripe for reviving the commitment of the world to make it safer for the people at large,” said the official.

Drawing the attention of the media to the foreign secretary’s mention of nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea as two urgent threats to the world, the official said Mrs Beckett had pointed to other underlying trends as well like the emergence of Al Qaeda and its offshoots; the question of how the world could ensure that the pursuit of civil nuclear energy did not lead to either nuclear materials or particularly potentially dangerous nuclear know-how — particularly enrichment and reprocessing technologies — being diverted for military use or just falling into the wrong hands and finally the START treaty would expire in 2009 and then in 2010 the NPT Review Conference was scheduled.

The official also pointed out that Mrs Beckett had categorised the progress so far made on disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation as a ‘success” but at the same time she felt that there were no grounds for complacency.