At a two-day conference on nuclear non-proliferation at Washington's Carnegie Endowment, El Baradei said if these three states were kept out of such negotiations, all efforts to contain proliferation would fail.

"Any new adjustment to the regime must include India, Pakistan and Israel at the negotiating table," El Baradei said, addressing about 600 prominent non-proliferation experts from across the world. "Without their inclusion in and commitment to this broad non-proliferation and security reform, our efforts will fail."

"If you have countries ... like India, like Pakistan ... out of the system, I don't think that's the right approach," he added. "I think you need to get everybody."

At the same conference, the Carnegie Endowment presented a 95-page report suggesting the United States should stop demanding that Pakistan, India and Israel give up their nuclear weapons and join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty as non-weapon states.

Instead, the report titled "Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security," urges the United States to lead a diplomatic initiative to persuade the three states to agree to the non-proliferation obligations already accepted by five recognized nuclear states, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The "universal compliance strategy for nuclear security," points out that efforts to coerce India, Pakistan and Israel into giving up their weapons will not succeed. Instead, it urges the international community to make the three states "shoulder the obligations of responsible international citizenship."

In return, they would "gain relief from unproductive, ritualistic hectoring or possible coercion to eliminate their nuclear arsenals before others do."

The Carnegie Endowment describes its plan for dealing with the critical challenged posed by Pakistan, India and Israel as a "constructive way" forward for resolving the so-called three-state problem.

India and Pakistan tested their nuclear devices in May 1998 and have since been engaged in an expensive nuclear and missile race. Israel has not yet declared its nuclear weapons but apparently has an arsenal of sophisticated atomic weapons and the technology to use them.

"Their status as known or presumed holders of nuclear weapons has clearly contributed to tensions in their respective regions," El Baradei said.

To bring India and Pakistan into the arms-control process he suggested including them in a global disarmament plan. Israel, he said, should be brought into this arrangement as part of a new security and disarmament structure in the Middle East that should go ... "hand in hand with the peace process in that region."

The IAEA director general said the most "disturbing lesson" to emerge from his agency's inspections in Iran and Libya was "the existence of an extensive illicit market for the supply of nuclear items, which clearly thrives on demand."

He said that the relative ease with which Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan and his associates were able to set up and operate a multinational illicit network demonstrated clearly the inadequacy of the present export-control system.

"Nuclear components designed in one country could be manufactured in another; shipped through a third, which may have appeared to be a legitimate user; assembled in a fourth; and designed for eventual turnkey use in a fifth," said El Baradei while explaining how the Khan network worked.

The report points out that India's demand for additional benefits as a major nuclear power "flows from an anachronistic belief that the world somehow owes something to states with nuclear weapons."

"Today, obligations flow the other way. States possessing nuclear weapons should be judged by their contribution to the global interest in preventing the spread and use of these devices," the report warns.

Under the proposed universal compliance strategy, Pakistan, India and Israel would agree to prevent proliferation exports, to secure nuclear weapons and materials, to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their national security policies, and to eschew nuclear testing.

"If these states failed to comply with their commitments, they would be subject to the same sorts of U.S. sanctions and political pressures China and Russia have faced over their past transgressions of non-proliferation rules," the report says.

The report warns that the goal of persuading India, Israel and Pakistan to abandon nuclear weapons should not be dropped. Instead, they should be expected to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as and when China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States eliminate theirs.

Although the report proposes accepting Pakistan, India and Israel as de facto nuclear states, it opposes selling nuclear technology to the three states. "Tolerating possession of nuclear weapons by India, Israel and Pakistan does not mean rewarding these three states with nuclear reactors, as India, and more recently, Pakistan have sought," the report says, arguing that restrictions on nuclear commerce are necessary to uphold the incentives that reward other states for not wanting to acquire nuclear weapons.

The report says that if non-nuclear weapon states want to ease restrictions on nuclear com merce with India, Pakistan and Israel, they should propose alternative guidelines.

The report also observes that nuclear and missile arms race between India and Pakistan cannot be averted without normalizing their bilateral relations, particularly over Kashmir, which has already caused two wars between them since 1947.

Similarly, achieving a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East will require normalization of relations between Israel and other regional states and entities, the report says.

But relations between Israel and Arab states cannot improve without a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the cessation of terrorist attacks, the report says.

Reminding the international community that the use of nuclear weapons could result in "staggering casualties and global disorder," the report says India, Israel and Pakistan that they have a special obligation to ensure that their nuclear weapons "are not used and do not spread."

The report then suggests that to reduce the threats of a nuclear disaster, world's major five recognized nuclear powers "must concentrate their diplomatic influence on defusing the conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia and Northeast Asia that underlie the determination of some states to posses nuclear weapons."

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