The United States denied on Friday that a landmark nuclear co-operation agreement with India will encourage Iran and North Korea to press ahead with their renegade nuclear programs.
"We don't see any proliferation downsides, we see a proliferation upside" in the agreement which was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate late on Thursday, said Under-secretary of State Nichols Burns, an architect of the deal.
Under the pact, India, a nuclear weapons power which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), gains access to long-denied civilian nuclear technology in return for placing its atomic reactors under global safeguards.
US President George W. Bush has defended the agreement as key to cementing a strategic alliance with energy-hungry India while at the same time giving international inspectors access to Indian nuclear sites.
Critics countered that forging such an agreement with a nation that defied global non-proliferation efforts to develop its own nuclear arms seriously undermines efforts to prevent North Korea and Iran from following suit.
Burns rejected the argument, saying "the contest couldn't be greater" between the cases.
India "has played by the rules" by not spreading its nuclear technology even without being an NPT signatory and by "not threatening to use it weapons", he said.
"Contrast that with Iran and North Korea -- both of them were on the inside of a non-proliferation regime but have been serial cheaters and violators of the NPT regime and of the IAEA," he said, referring to the UN watchdog agency.
"The moral of this story is: If you play by the rules, if you are responsible, if you live by the rules of the non-proliferation regime, then you will benefit.
"But if you cheat like Iran and North Korea, you're going to be sanctioned," he said.
The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea last month after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test explosion and Iran faces similar action after refusing to comply with an earlier UN demand it halt its enrichment of uranium, a step which can lead to the production of nuclear arms.
"There's not going to be any kind of solace that can be felt by the Iranian and the North Korean governments" after Senate passage of the India nuclear agreement, he said.