Saturday, April 23 2005 10:25 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The United States has said that Pakistan was working hard to root out extremism and nuclear proliferation from its soil.

"Pakistan has come a long way as a country in the difficulties of trying to root out extremism. It has had problems with terrorism being carried out from its territory into Afghanistan. But I would hope people would understand how much progress Pakistan has made," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Ekho Radio Moskvy.

Stressing that the US wants bilateral ties between India and Pakistan to improve, Rice said she had discussed recent developments in this regard with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov.

Regarding nuclear proliferation, she said there was need to convince nations that such weapons were not needed.

"What we must do is to convince others that nuclear weapons are not necessary. I think we are working together rather well in some of these matters. In fact, we are probably going to have to find ways for countries to seek civilian nuclear power while making sure that they are not trying to build nuclear weapons."

Alleging that Iran was hiding its nuclear activities, the US Secretary of State said, "We learn that there are undeclared activities at the reactor at Natanz and the Iranians have been probably involved in activities with A Q Khan, who was carrying out this black market activity."

All this does not inspire confidence in the international system about the Iranians, Rice said.