Bangalore: Former US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott today (Sep 25, 2004) said that India and United States need to put behind the contentious issue of nuclear weapons and work towards a broad based engagement in many other areas in the future.

"We need to have a more broad based engagement and not be involved in technical issues," Talbott, who along with former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh anchored the India-US dialogue on security, non-proliferation and other issues during the Clinton administration, told reporters in Bangalore.

He said the recent relaxations made by the Bush administration under the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) were technical in nature and pointed out that there were several other areas where relationship between the two big democracies could be strengthened. Stating that there were several countries like Germany and Japan who have emerged economically strong consciously without possessing nuclear weapons, Talbott said, "Military power has lost relevance in a changing economic world."

Talbott, who is currently the president of Brookings University in the US, advocated scaling down nuclear weapons held by both India and the US and said, "US has an obligation to move away from nukes as we were the first to use it on Hiroshima."

He said the US was involved in a broad range of talks with both India and China at the official as well as unofficial levels.