WASHINGTON, July 25: US officials commenting on the Indo-US nuclear deal have indicated that the Bush administration is unlikely to offer a similar deal to Pakistan. A foreign office spokesman told journalists in Islamabad on Monday that Pakistan would seek a similar arrangement with the US.

But a senior official of the US State Department — Under Secretary Nicholas Burns — indicated at a recent briefing that the US would not offer a similar nuclear to Pakistan just because it had signed the deal with India.

“There is no reason for us to have a hyphenated strategic framework for South Asia ... And certainly in the case of civil nuclear cooperation, we are going to have individual relationships,” he said.

Explaining what caused Washington to sign the deal with India, Mr Burns said: “India has a record of non-proliferation, which is exceptional, very strong commitment to protection of fissile material, other nuclear materials and nuclear technology; and there is a transparency about India’s program, which has been welcomed.”

US policy makers also point out that only last year they busted the so-called Khan network of nuclear proliferators that operated from Pakistan. US policy makers also say that in their dealing with South Asia, they no longer bracket India with Pakistan.

For a long time India had insisted that the US should deal with New Delhi independently of Pakistan. But exigencies of the Cold War and then the war on terror forced Washington to view India through the Pakistan prism. Earlier this year, the US opened its arms supplies to India, with the balancing act of similar equipment, including F-16 fighter planes, being made available to Pakistan.

But this now seems to be changing. Ashley Tellis, an analyst at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who co-authored the policy paper that led to the Indo-US nuclear deal, says that the US now sees India in the larger context of growing Chinese influence in the South Asian region.

Mr Tellis, a US citizen of Indian origin, argues that to compete with China, India must boost its economic growth and to do so it needs energy. Nuclear power plants may be the best solution to its shortage of energy.

Some analysts, however, say that helping India build nuclear power plants even though it has refused to sign the NPT is a mistake. Some members of Congress have expressed concern that such a move could undermine American efforts to confront Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programmes. Under the deal, signed last week during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington, the Bush administration committed itself to providing civilian fuel and reactors to India, and to encouraging its allies to do the same.

In return, India agreed to stop weapons testing, and to allow inspections of its civilian nuclear facilities by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. However, these restrictions will not apply to India’s nuclear weapons programme.