WASHINGTON, June 21: The United States should stop demanding that Pakistan, India and Israel give up their nuclear weapons and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-weapon states , says a report presented on Monday at an international conference in Washington.

Instead, the United States should lead a diplomatic initiative to persuade the three states to commit themselves politically to accepting the non-proliferation obligations accepted by five recognized nuclear states.

China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are the five states that are permitted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to maintain nuclear weapons although they too are obliged to ultimately abandon all such weapons.

The 95-page, 'universal compliance strategy for nuclear security,' assures Pakistan, India and Israeli that "in return for explicitly shouldering the obligations of responsible international citizenship, (they) would gain relief from unproductive, ritualistic hectoring or possible coercion to eliminate their nuclear arsenals before others do."

The report, presented before a two-day international conference at a Washington think tank, describes its plan for dealing with the critical challenged posed by Pakistan, India and Israel as a 'constructive way' forward for resolving the so-called three-state problem.

Unlike North Korea and Iran, these three countries never signed the NPT and, therefore, have retained the 'right' to possess nuclear weapons. The international community, particularly the five nuclear states, however, is not yet willing to accept them as nuclear-weapon states.

More than 600 members of the arms control community' including Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency ' will debate this report at a two-day conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mitchell Reiss, director of policy planning at the US State Department, former US Senator Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative; and Hans Blix, who led the UN hunt for weapons in Iraq before the US invasion in March 2003 are also attending the conference.

Dealing with India's demand for additional benefits as a major nuclear power, the report points out that "this desire flows from an anachronistic belief that the world somehow owes something to states with nuclear weapons."

"Today, obligations flow the other way. States possessing nuclear weapons should be judged by their contribution to the global interest in preventing the spread and use of these devices," the report warns.

Under the proposed universal compliance strategy, Pakistan, India and Israel would agree to prevent proliferation exports, to secure nuclear weapons and materials, to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their national security policies, and to eschew nuclear testing.