India upgrading its missile programme.

India upgrading its missile programme.

WASHINGTON - Engineers in India are designing cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads, relying partly on

Russian missile-design assistance, a major American newspaper said in a report Thursday on Indian and

Pakistani nuclear programmes over whose expansions, it said, US officials have concerns.

"India is also trying to equip its Agni ballistic missiles with such warheads and to deploy them on submarines,"

The Washington Post said in report apparently marking the day on which Pakistan carried out its nuclear tests in response to the Indian atomic blasts. "Its (India's) rudimentary missile-defence capability is slated for a major upgrade next year." US intelligence and proliferation experts say India and Pakistan indicate their nuclear programmes offer leverage in an arms race that has picked up and diversified similar to the US-USSR arms race, the Post said.

"They are both going great guns on new systems, new materials; they are doing everything you would imagine,"

a former US intelligence official told the Post. Pakistan is expected to be ready to produce plutonium for its

nuclear arsenal sometime next year, the newspaper said despite denials by Pakistan of such reports. At the

same time, the newspaper cited US experts as saying that Pakistan's nuclear programme should not been seen

in isolation when New Delhi is advancing its systems as well as piling on to its huge array of weapons. "While

Pakistan's nuclear programme has lately attracted the most worry, because of the close proximity to the capital of Taliban insurgents, many US experts say that it should not be considered in isolation from India's own nuclear expansion," the Post said in the report in which it also focused on the Indian activities.