While American newspapers speculate on Al Qaida's nuclear weapons arsenal, atomic South Asia has just made the cover of two leading American publications. The New Yorker has a piece "The Iran Game" by Seymour Hersh on how Pakistan has helped in the making of Iran's bomb. According to Hersh, Russia has played a key role in building Iran's nuclear capabilities but the ubiquitous Dr A.Q. Khan has also made his contribution. The other article, "India, Pakistan and the Bomb" in the monthly Scientific American, is of direct relevance to the subcontinent. It is also unusual in its authorship, having been written jointly by two noted physicists and peace activists-M.V. Ramana, an Indian working at Princeton University in the US, and A.H. Nayyar, a Pakistani now at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Ramana and Nayyar are clear in their conclusion: the Indian subcontinent is the place where a nuclear war is most likely. According to them, even before the watershed events of September 11, South Asia had all the ingredients of a nuclear war: "possession and continued development of bombs and missiles, imminent deployment of nuclear weapons, inadequate preparations to avoid unauthorised use of these weapons, geographical proximity, ongoing conflict in Kashmir, militaristic religious extremist movements and leaders who seem sanguine about the dangers of nuclear war". Even if we accept the fact that the subcontinental nuclear arsenal is only "strategically active but operationally dormant", this is a chilling message.

In the past 24 months, two masterly books on India's nuclear policy have emerged from the American intellectual establishment. George Perkovich's India's Nuclear Bomb and Ashley Tellis' India's Emerging Nuclear Posture are authoritative works that have become essential reading. Unlike these academic tomes, Ramana and Nayyar's account is cast in the popular mould and summarises pithily the current state of nuclear play in the subcontinent. After providing a detailed description of the nuclear and missile establishment of both India and Pakistan, Ramana and Nayyar estimate that India has plutonium for between 55 and 110 bombs whereas Pakistan has an inventory of enriched uranium equivalent to 20-40 bombs. Of course, since India's nuclear programme is directed as much against China as Pakistan, India's arsenal needs to be compared with that of China. Ramana and Nayyar write that in spite of India's missile capability, it is unlikely to achieve nuclear parity with China. What they don't talk about is the debilitating consequences for the Indian economy if ever the Indian government made nuclear parity with China its objective, as many experts in this country advocate.

The reality is that India and Pakistan are two nuclear adversaries whose missiles can reach the other's territory in a matter of seconds, not minutes as was the case with the US and the USSR. They are also nuclear antagonists without the type of official and non-official confidence-building contacts that the US and the USSR had during the height of the Cold War. At the February 1999 Lahore Summit India and Pakistan did sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to "adopt measures for promoting a stable environment of peace, stability and security between the two countries". Unfortunately, the Kargil conflict intervened soon after and this fine declaration of intent could not be translated into a concrete conflict avoidance and confidence-building agreement.

It is not as if India and Pakistan do not have confidence-building agreements in the nuclear arena. For example, Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto signed the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities in December 1988. Agreements have also been signed on advance notification of military exercises, prevention of airspace violations and prohibition of chemical weapons. But the conversion of the Lahore MoU into a treaty containing communication, constraint, transparency and verification measures would be an even more gigantic step forward.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been making some encouraging noises in this regard and India must seize the initiative to ensure that such a treaty for nuclear and missile conflict management does get signed soon. This must not be linked to discussions on Jammu and Kashmir, something that Musharraf has insisted upon in the past but on which he might well relent with some gentle but firm nudging by the US. The world's fears about a nuclear South Asia would be assuaged to a great deal if such a treaty were to be put in place in the next few months and if the two nuclear adversaries agree to a cooperative monitoring regime to enhance stability along their border. The finalisation of such a treaty must be America's top priority in its diplomacy in our region.

(The author is with the Congress party. These are his personal views)