ISLAMABAD, Feb 1: A team of United States officials Is due here this week for talks with the Pakistan government on the return of nine leased warships demanded by Washington recently, official sources said here today, reports AFP.

The team, earlier scheduled to arrive Sunday, changed its programme slightly for administrative reasons, they said.

Analysts and official circles here link the demand to arm-twisting by Washington over Islamabad's nuclear programme, which led to suspension of American economic and military aid to Pakistan in 1990.

The warships, eight frigates and a support vessel, were leased to Pakistan In 1988.

Pakistan's naval chief.

Admiral Saeed Khan, said in December that the demand had been made in the context of the US Pressler Law, which forbids assistance to countries pursuing a weapon-oriented nuclear policy.

Islamabad has refused to wind up its nuclear programme, insisting that It Is geared entirely to peaceful purposes, and has repeatedly offered to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) simultaneously with its rival India.

India, which exploded a "peaceful" nuclear device In 1974, refuses to sign the NPT, saying its is discriminatory.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted by the official Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) Sunday as saying that Pakistan had achieved nuclear capability, but it had no intention of making nuclear weapons.

The Chairman of the Pakistan Senate. Wasim Sajjad, said Monday Islamabad would not sign the NPT "unilaterally" because that would "compromise" the country’s security.

The objectives of NPT can only be achieved when all countries in South Asia, including India, sign the treaty, he added.

Urging the new US administration to review the Pressler Law, he said it had become "out dated" because It failed to check nuclear proliferation in the region.

"India has not only made a nuclear bomb, but is also developing a missile system

which can even hit the US by the year 2000," he said.

Sajjad said the "insistence" on the Pressler Law would "damage" American interests In this region and have a "severe negative impact" on Pakistan-US relations.

He called upon US policy makers to come up with a new proposal which could help control nuclear proliferation In South Asia "on the basis of equality and non-dlscrlmina-tlon"

Pakistan wants to maintain Its "good relations" with the United States, he said, adding that "at the same time we give high importance to our self-respect and sovereignty."

Apart from the nuclear Issue, US-Pakistan relations have also come under strain because of recent signals from Washington that Pakistan had been put on a watch list of countries sponsoring terrorism, on suspicion of military support for secessionist mili-tants in Indian-held Kashmir.

Pakistan says Kashmiris are struggling for their right of self-determination promised to them over four decades ago by the United Nations and also guaranteed by India and that it only extends "moral, diplomatic and political support to their legitimate struggle."

Pakistani leaders have also been urging the United States to take not of "gross human rights violations" in Indian -held Kashmir, where more than 9,000 people have died since January 1990 in violence

linked to the Muslim insur-I"?hcrc is no ground for

Pakistan being declared a terrorist state," Minister of State for' Foreign Affairs Siddiqtie Kanju has said.

Before the change of guard in the White House last month. Foreign Secretary Shaharyar Mohammed Khan said Islamabad would establish "early dialogue" with the Bill Clinton Administratioh to resolve mutual differences which have clouded relations between the two traditional allies.

Informed sources here said Pakistan's new army chief. General Abdul Waheed, is to go to Washington soon to pick up the thread of discussions Initiated by his predecessor Gen.