Singapore: In an obvious reference to Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha on August 26 warned that proliferation with the "attendant" risk of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists groups was now the "greatest" in Asia.

"This is particularly so in the immediate neighbourhood of India, where it is possible to find the conjunction of authoritarian rule, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, drug trafficking and weapons of mass destruction," he said delivering a lecture at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies on the theme "Asia – A Period of Change".

Sinha, who is on a short visit to the city-state said, "Some of the most deliberate and well-documented instances of nuclear and missile transfers have taken place in this (Asian) region."

Referring to the August 25 twin blasts in Mumbai that have claimed 52 lives, the Minister said India's commercial capital was deliberately chosen because what these terrorists and their sponsors envied the most was the country's success in the economic field.

Observing that the relative stability that ASEAN enjoyed over the last few decades had also been shattered by the rise of extremist forces in that region, he said, "A harsh, militant, puritanical form of Islam brought in by outsiders, preying on a false sense of victimisation is threatening to displace South East Asia's Islamic tradition of syncretism and co-existence."

PTI