UNITED NATIONS - On his second day on the job, Pakistan's U.N. ambassador said on Wednesday that ruling out his country's use of nuclear arms against a conventional attack would give India a "license to kill" Pakistanis.

Munir Akram, who presented his credentials at the United Nations on Tuesday, told a news conference that while Pakistan would not attack India unless it was first attacked, it had never subscribed to a doctrine of "no first use" of nuclear arms against its South Asian neighbor.

Pakistani people around a missile imitation, celebrate the fourth nuclear testing anniversary in Karachi, Pakistan on Tuesday, May 28, 2002. Forces of the nuclear rivals, India and Pakistan, are on high alert due to rising tension over the Kashmir dispute. (AP Photo/Anwer Abbas)

As India's armed forces are larger than Pakistan's, anyone asking Pakistan to rule out using nuclear weapons unless they were first used against it would be "asking us in fact to accept the use of (conventional) force for India," he said.

"So long as the use of force is outlawed, we will accept no first use of nuclear weapons also. But India should not have the license to kill with the use of conventional weapons while our hands are tied with regard to other means to defend ourselves," he said.

The two nuclear-armed countries have been brought to the brink of war by attacks by Islamic militants across the line of control that divides Pakistan- and Indian-ruled Kashmir, with India accusing Pakistan of arming and training the militants.

The two sides have massed about a million men along their border since a December attack on the Indian parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants.

Tension soared again after an attack by suspected Islamic militants on an Indian army camp near Jammu on May 14, prompting Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to tell his front-line troops to prepare for a "decisive fight."

Akram's news conference came after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said in a broadcast address on Monday that his nation did not want war with India but was ready to respond with full force if attacked.

Akram said the United Nations was important to his country, which saw it as a forum to seek justice for Kashmir's people.

A series of U.N. Security Council resolutions since 1948 have set out a path for Kashmir to determine its future in a referendum conducted under U.N. auspices, but the referendum has never been carried out.

Akram said Pakistan had made it clear to the international community that it would not start a war against India.

"However, Pakistan has also made it clear that if there is a war thrust upon us, if Indian does commit aggression against Pakistan, we will respond with our full might against India, and we will take the battle to India," Akram said.

"The international community, obviously, is rightly concerned about this latest heightening of tensions," he said, adding that Pakistan was trying to prevent militants from infiltrating across the line of control.

"We are therefore hopeful that good sense will prevail, that sanity will prevail, that India will not take recourse to the use of force against Pakistan. But we are ready. And if we are attacked, we shall respond, and we shall respond with our full might," he said.

Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited

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