06 May,2009 03:02 PM IST | | IANS
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says he proposes to start a fresh peace dialogue with India after the Indian elections are over later this month.
"Democracies have never gone to war. No Pakistani democratic government has gone to war with India. We've always wanted peace. We still want peace with India," Zardari said in an interview on Tuesday.
"I'm waiting for the (Indian general) elections to be over so that all of this rhetoric is over and I can start a fresh dialogue with the Indian government," he said.
Zardari was responding to a question whether what President Barack Obama called Islamabad's "obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan" was indeed 'misguided'.
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Zardari said Pakistan also wanted a commercial relationship with India. "We want a commercial relationship with them. I'm looking at the markets of India for the industrialists of Pakistan and hoping to do the same."
Asked about US concern that most of about $10 billion provided by US to Pakistan since 9/11 has been used to beef up its arsenal against some sort of threat from India, Zardari said: "Let's say they've given $10 billion in 10 years, a billion nearly a year for the war effort in-against the Taliban, and the war that is going on."
Zardari is in Washington to meet US President Barack Obama in a trilateral summit with the Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday. The trilateral meetings would continue Thursday.
Zardari says Pakistan's nuclear weapons are safe
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has claimed that his country's nuclear weapons are safe, rejecting US concerns that some of these weapons are at risk of being acquired by members of the Taliban.
"They are in safe hands," Zardari told CNN in an interview on Tuesday.
The comments come two days after the New York Times reported senior American officials are increasingly worried Taliban militants could acquire unsecured weapons in Pakistan's arsenal.
Zardari said the region is not at risk of falling into the Taliban's control. "We have a 700,000 (man) army. How could they take over?" he said.
Zardari also brushed aside US concerns that Taliban sympathisers within Pakistan's army could help the terrorist organisation acquire some of the country's nuclear weapons.
