UNITED NATIONS, May 25: Robert McNamara, who was US defence secretary during the Vietnam war, on Tuesday called on the Bush administration to give ‘negative security assurances’ to North Korea and Iran in order to stop their nuclear enrichment programme.

“Noth Korea should be assured that US is not looking for a regime change and should be offered a non-agression pact” in order to gain its compliance, he said.

Addressing a press conference on the eve of the conclusion of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) on Tuesday, Mr McMamara stressed that the ‘situation is very dangerous’ vis-a-vis proliferation of nuclear weapons and asked nations to take decisive action on the issue to contain the problem.

He said if the NPT conferences failed to achieve its objective of controlling nuclear proliferation and nuclear disarmament, the UN Security Council may have to step in to stop proliferation.

Mr McNamara chided the United States and Russia for not keeping their end of the bargain on nuclear disarmament.