Islamabad, May 29 (IANS) The real threat to Pakistan is internal and "not from India", a Pakistani daily said Sunday.

An editorial in the Daily Times also wondered what role, if any, will nuclear weapons play in the ongoing war on terror.

The editorial said the nature of the threat to Pakistan "cannot be met by nuclear weapons as has been demonstrated in the ongoing war on terror.

"What will nuclear weapons do against the asymmetrical warfare of the once-pampered jehadis who have turned on us?" it asked. "The real current threat to Pakistan is not from India. It is internal."

In 1998, Pakistan became the world's seventh nuclear weapons state.

The editorial wondered whether the country had been secured by going nuclear.

"Back in 1998, then prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the military decided it was time to declare ourselves a nuclear-armed state after India's nuclear tests ignoring the fact that India actually went nuclear in 1974.

"The sanctions and international isolation that followed... could have been avoided. On top of that, nuclear proliferation made us a pariah state while India came out smelling of roses, despite the fact that it was the first in the subcontinent to make its bomb clandestinely."

It said nuclear weapons are "inherently unusable, whether against another nuclear-armed state or a non-nuclear one".

The editorial noted that the logic of Pakistan's defence paradigm is that "since we are the weaker force, we cannot allow India to defeat us through conventional means".

"All-out wars between India and Pakistan may have been ruled out due to both going nuclear but our strategic defence doctrine could not stop a localised war like Kargil (in 1999) from occurring. The world had to intervene to prevent a dangerous escalation."

The editorial bluntly said that it was "beyond comprehension why we are stockpiling nuclear weapons when we already have second-strike capability, especially at a time when our country faces a grave economic crisis.

"...Before indulging in a nuclear arms race, we need to stand on our feet."

It added: "The jehadi game we have played for decades must end now if we want to survive. Wasting precious money on nuclear weapons is no use. And for good measure, the whole jehadi enterprise has to be shut down."