Washington, July 14 - A leading arms control expert has suggested that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should use her visit to India to 're-establish nuclear restraint and arms control as a top priority for the region'.

South Asia is as much a nuclear tinderbox as it was a decade ago when Indian and Pakistani-supported forces engaged in a clash that almost triggered a nuclear war, Daryl G. Kimball writes in an editorial in the July/August edition of Arms Control Today.

India and Pakistan each claim to want only a 'minimal credible deterrent', but the end of their nuclear and missile build-up is not in sight, he writes. Their 'support for negotiations on a global fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT) is weak at best'.

Despite its struggle against extremists inside its own borders, the Pakistani army sees India as its main adversary, Kimball said, noting: 'Pakistan is expanding its uranium-enrichment capabilities and building two new plutonium-production reactors for weapons purposes even though it already possesses enough fissile material for 60-80 bombs.'

One excuse for Pakistan's ongoing build-up is the US-Indian nuclear cooperation initiative, Kimball suggested.