India has said it hoped Islamabad would take necessary steps to ensure the security of its nuclear assets.

“We have seen reports of what happened today at Kamra (in Pakistan). We hope the Pakistan government will continue to take steps to effectively secure their nuclear assets,” foreign secretary Nirupama Rao said.

She was responding to a question on the terror attack near a strategic military complex reportedly linked to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme near Islamabad. A Taliban suicide bomber killed eight persons outside a key Pakistani air force facility. Officials denied that the target was linked to the country’s nuclear programme.

New Delhi has also expressed unhappiness over “very, very slow and tardy” progress in investigation and prosecution in the Mumbai attacks case as well as the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul last year.

Rao said there had been “lack of progress from the Pakistan side when it comes to investigation of all the long series of terrorist attacks that have been directed against us from their soil”.

She said “bilateral relationship will be in focus” when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in Thailand on Saturday.

“You are aware of the outstanding issues that remain to be resolved between India and China and obviously in meetings of this nature, especially meetings between leadership at the highest level, there is an opportunity to address all these issues,” she said.