No US nuclear aid on cards for Pakistan

US President George W Bush praised Pakistan’s fight against terrorism as unfaltering this weekend but turned down an appeal for the same civilian nuclear help the United States intends to give India, the country’s arch rival.

“Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories,” Mr Bush said at a news conference with President General Pervez Musharraf. The White House said that was a diplomatic way of saying no, at least not now.

The day Mr Bush visited the capital, pro-Taliban tribesmen and Pakistani security forces engaged in a fierce battle near the Afghan border. Dozens of militants were reported killed in the clash.

Mr Bush and Mr Musharraf renewed their war-on-terror alliance in a news conference at the presidential palace. Fears of terrorism limited Mr Bush’s movements to the palace and the heavily guarded diplomatic compound that houses the US Embassy.

“We’re not going to back down in the face of these killers,” Bush said two days after a suicide car-bombing killed an American diplomat in the southern city of Karachi. “We’ll fight this war and we will win this war together.”

After visiting three nations in South Asia, Mr Bush was returning home to a stack of political problems - from bad approval ratings and embarrassing Hurricane Katrina videos to lingering questions about a domestic surveillance program and the takeover of some American port operations by an Arab company.