Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is conveying these views to President Clinton at a luncheon meeting that is going on at the time of writing Wednesday afternoon.

Clinton is expected to ask for a firm commitment and date for Islamabad putting its signature on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and seek clarifications on Pakistan's drive against terrorism and the fragile domestic political and economic situation. As if on cue, the President yesterday signed papers formally waiving sanctions against Pakistan (and India) until October 21, 1999. The waiver will help prop up Islamabad and Sharif immediately, allowing US backing for the IMF's $ 5.5-billion economic bailout for Pakistan.

It will also facilitate a deal onthe sequestered F-16s which New Zealand has agreed this week to lease and also allow resumption of modest military-to-military exchanges between the two countries.

But Pakistan is setting its sight much higher. For one, it is now saying that the $ 5.5 billion bail-out package is barely enough to avoid default and the US and the western powers ought to do more do rescue it from the financial crisis, which it is arguing is caused partly by the economic chain reaction arising from India going nuclear.

More pertinently according to Pakistani officials, Sharif will propose a case that unless the root problem of Kashmir is addressed all other solutions will be stopgap.

``Pakistan would welcome mediation by the US, or for that matter, mediatory efforts by any other country or international organisation to resolve the Jammu and Kashmir dispute,'' Sharif said in a statement on arrival here, leaving no doubts about what the focus of his diplomatic shtick will be.

The US has a well-defined position of notintervening in Kashmir, but Pakistani officials are saying the situation has altered dramatically, especially since the nuclear tests. Sharief is telling Clinton about ``horrendous human rights abuses in Kashmir,'' aides said. The Pakistani Prime Minister is also pressing for resumption of conventional military aid to Pakistan suspended in 1990 under the Pressler Amendment in the wake of it going covertly nuclear.

``In the face of a conventional military imbalance with India, Pakistan will have to depend more on its nuclear capability. The imbalance should be corrected,'' Sharif said going into the meeting.

By implication, Sharif is suggesting that if the US wants to rein in Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, then it has to compensate Islamabad with conventional weapons to match India's conventional military strength, particularly since the US will not allow (and Pakistan cannot afford) to keep as many nuclear weapons as India.

The Pakistanis are also going into the meetings with a checklist of Indian armspurchases in recent years, especially New Delhi's recent arms deal with Russia.

Under one of the formulas being discussed on the sidelines, Pakistan can have a small nuclear arsenal which is ratio-driven (and not parity-driven) vis-a-vis India. This means that instead of having as many nuclear weapons as India, it will have to settle for a ratio (of say 1:4 or 1:6).

But to accept any ratio-driven formula, Islamabad wants the flow of conventional military weapons to resume to correct the 2:1 conventional military advantage India enjoys. Islamabad is not willing to countenance arguments about India's larger size, longer boundaries and coastline, and wider threat perceptions.