NEW DELHI, Sept 11: President Pervez Musharraf proposes to ask the United States to deny any further arms sales to India, an Indian newspaper reported on Wednesday, quoting excerpts from his meeting with the editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor in Boston.

“Pervez Musharraf will ask President Bush to deny India access to hi-tech items aimed at increasing its conventional military potential while seeking a fresh arms package, including F-16s, to enable Islamabad maintain deterrent capability,” the Times of India quoted the brief from the meeting as saying.

President Musharraf said that conventional parity “and not nuclear deterrence” was what forestalled a possible attack by India earlier this year. This parity was now in jeopardy because of arms purchases by India that he estimated at $4.5 billion this year.

“India has increased its budget by 50 per cent in the past three years,” Musharraf said, presumably referring to the defence outlay. “They are going to be the highest arms importers in the world. So gradually we are seeing a definite tilt in the conventional balance of forces. This is dangerous.”

Musharraf said the United States could restore the conventional balance in two ways. One, “proactively deny” India the access to high-tech items, and secondly, restore arms supply to Pakistan including the F-16s.

Gen Musharraf’s “change of tack” he had earlier maintained that it was Pakistan’s nuclear capability that has stopped war with India “is evidently aimed at getting Washington to reopen arms supply to Islamabad,” the Times said in its dispatch from Washington.

Musharraf’s remarks came even as India’s Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha and US Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed to resume exchanges in hi-tech fields stalled because of the 9/11 fallout, it said.