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U.S. intelligence and proliferation experts say India and Pakistan indicate their nuclear programs offer leverage in an arms race that has picked up and diversified similar to the U.S.-U.S.S.R. arms race, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

"They are both going great guns (on) new systems, new materials; they are doing everything you would imagine", a former U.S. intelligence official told the Post.

Pakistan is expected to be ready to produce plutonium for its nuclear arsenal sometime next year, observers said. Engineers in India, meanwhile, are designing cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads, and the country's missile-defense capability is scheduled to be upgraded in 2010.

U.S. officials say focused appeals to the two countries to slow their nuclear work probably won't work, the Post said.

"We have to think of dealing with the South Asian problem not on a purely regional basis, but in the context of a more global approach", Gary Samore, senior White House non-proliferation adviser, said after a speech to the Arms Control Association last week.

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