ISLAMABAD, Jan 6: Pakistan on Monday said that India’s official statement about nuclear weapons last week signalled an “important extension of Indian policy of using nuclear weapons”.

Foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan told a press briefing that the statement was “a further evidence that nuclear weapons and their use is very much part of Indian strategic policy”.

Answering questions, Mr Khan elaborated that Delhi’s announcement to use nuclear weapons if attacked with biological and chemical weapons was an important extension of India’s policy of using of nuclear weapons.

The spokesman rejected as baseless a report which suggested that President Pervez Musharraf and US Secretary of State Colin Powell had agreed that hot pursuit of the fleeing Afghan fighters by the American forces across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border would continue but quietly without any side making statement about it.

The spokesman emphasized that there should be no ambiguity that only Pakistani forces had been conducting anti-terrorist operations within Pakistan for the last 14 months when the anti-terror war was unleashed by an international coalition led by the US armed forces. He said that only Pakistani forces would conduct the operations in future.

However, he added, Pakistan had been cooperating with the international community, including the American forces, and coordinating in efforts against terrorists.

The spokesman maintained that the only incident or accident which took place recently when an American plane had bombed a madressah inside the Pakistan border was under investigation. It remained to be determined “what fell and where,” he said.

The spokesman argued that the Durand Line, a frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, had at places disappeared owing to over two decades of turmoil in Afghanistan. Though demarcation pillars were there, at places they had apparently been destroyed. On ground, he said, it might not be possible to identify exactly the Durand Line but it was there in maps.

The spokesman said that the likely time of Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri’s proposed visit to the United States would be later this month when the US Congress would be re-convened and President George W. Bush would make his State of the Union address.

Mr Khan reiterated that the stringent visa conditions being imposed by India on Pakistani visitors tended to cause considerable sufferings to people desiring to meet the members of their divided families. The Indian decision would further vitiate relations between the two countries, he said.

APP ADDS: The clash between the US and Pakistani troops at Angor Adda, the spokesman said, was being investigated. It was an isolated incident as there had been no problems in the past 14 months. He said the findings of the inquiry would be made public as soon as they were available.