Moscow: A prestigious Russian think-tank has proposed to admit India and Pakistan into the elite club of five official nuclear powers to put an end to their indefinite status and prompt them to assume non-proliferation responsibilities.

In a book, three top South Asia experts of the Russian Science Academy's Institute of Oriental Studies have argued that there is no other alternative to granting official nuclear power status to India and Pakistan and the world community would have to somehow resolve this problem.

In their book 'South Asia in the World Politics', prominent Russian experts on South Asia, Dr Vyacheslav Belokrinitsky, Dr Vladimir Moskalenko and Dr Tatyana Shaumyan, have also suggested to give India permanent berth in the UN Security Council, which would have a "positive" impact on New Delhi's status in South Asia.

"Today India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons and this will continue for a long time till the global elimination of the nuclear weapons. In this connection we believe that both the countries should be given official status of nuclear powers. There is simply no other alternative; their present ambiguous status, real and formal, cannot continue indefinitely," authors of the book say.