Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank which maintains close links with the Republican-controlled US Congress and which has traditionally been well plugged in with GOP administrations, Aziz declared Declaring that Pakistan is "a responsible nuclear power," and "as a fossil fuel deficit country, we need to develop nuclear power generation to meet the growing needs for energy as required for our expanding economy."

The Prime Minister is expected to meet President George W Bush [Images] at the White House and other senior Bush Administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [Images], on Tuesday.

His appeal came despite clear pronouncements by senior Administration officials that it has no intention of cloning its nuclear deal with India with Pakistan or any other country that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

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And even as negotiations between New Delhi and Washington continue regarding the credible and transparent separation of India's civilian and military nuclear facilities to envisage the approval of the US Congress to ultimate implementation of the July 18 nuclear deal, Aziz said that "We are prepared to accept all safeguards for our civilian nuclear power sector."

The Pakistani prime minister also stoutly defended his country's nuclear weapons program saying that "it must be viewed in the context of India's pursuit of the nuclear option and our own security concerns."

"Our strategic capabilities have been developed in self-defense following the Indians nuclear test of 1974, that disrupted the security balance providing a nuclear edge to India's already existing numerical advantage in conventional weapons over Pakistan," he said.

The Pokhran nuclear tests by India in May 1998, "obliged Pakistan to respond in order to establish a credible nuclear deterrence," since "failure to do so could have created a dangerous ambiguity about our capacity and could have led to possible miscalculations."

He argued that it was this credible nuclear deterrence acquired by Pakistan that had prevented India from engaging in a conflict with Pakistan "following the deployment of more than one million troops on our borders during 2001 and 2002."

Pak demands N-parity from US

Aziz said "as a nuclear weapons state, we adhere to the doctrine of minimum, credible deterrence and are opposed to any nuclear proliferation as well as an arms race in the region. Accordingly, we have proposed a strategic restraint regime to India."

"We also believe that the induction of anti-ballistic missile systems would have a destabilizing impact on the entire region," he warned, even as US defense manufacturers continue to push India to purchase sophisticated anti-ballistic missile systems and have already provided New Delhi with several briefings on these systems.

Obviously in an attempt to dissipate the concerns of the US Congress that the nuclear blackmarket network of A Q Khan has not been completely shut down, and with several US lawmakers convinced that the Khan network was behind Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program, Aziz pledged that Pakistan "is committed to the prevention of nuclear proliferation and has developed a strong command and control structure to protect our strategic assets as well as effective export controls to ensure against nuclear leakage."

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On the US-led campaign to isolate Iran over its alleged attempts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, which is sure to figure prominently on the agenda of his talks with President Bush and other senior Administration officials, the prime minister said "Pakistan has clearly stated its opposition to nuclear weapons proliferation."

But "we accept Iran's right to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy under appropriate IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards. We have consistently advised Iran to address this issue through dialogue with the EU (European Union) troika. We also believe that countries such as Russia [Images] and China could play a constructive role to resolve this issue."

However, he warned, "at the same time, we oppose any resort to use of force as this would aggravate the already troubled situation in the region."