Tuesday, February 22 2005 14:03 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The risk of war in South Asia would remain "fairly high" over the next 15 years where the threat of a major conflict between India and Pakistan would "overshadow" all other regional issues, America's National Intelligence Council (NIC) has warned.

In its forecast of global trends over the next 15 years, the NIC, representing 15 spy agencies of the US, including the CIA, said that continued turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan would spill over into Kashmir and other areas of the subcontinent, prompting Indian leaders to take more "aggressive pre-emptive and retaliatory actions".

"India's conventional military advantage over Pakistan will widen as a result of New Delhi's superior economic position. India will also continue to build up its ocean-going Navy to dominate the Indian Ocean transit routes used for delivery of Persian Gulf oil to Asia. The decisive shift in conventional military power in India's favour over the coming years potentially will make the region more volatile and unstable," it said.

The Council said both India and Pakistan would see Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) as a strategic imperative and would continue to amass nuclear warheads and build a variety of missile delivery systems.

"In South Asia, the risk of war remains fairly high over the next 15 years. India and Pakistan are both prone to miscalculation. Both will continue to build up their nuclear and missile forces," it warned and added that India is most likely to expand the size of its nuclear-capable force.

Pakistan's nuclear and missile forces also will continue to increase, the report said.

"The risk of escalation inherent in direct armed conflict will be magnified by the availability of WMD. Consequently, proliferation will spur a reversion to prolonged, lower-level conflict by other means: intimidation, subversion, terrorism, proxies and guerrilla operations," it said.

The report also said that the trend is already evident between Israel and some of its neighbours and between India and Pakistan.

India, says the NIC will be the unrivalled regional power. "The widening India-Pakistan gap - destabilising in its own right - will be accompanied by deep political, economic and social disparities within both States," it warned.