NEW Delhi India's enthusiastic response to the controversial nuclear vision spelt out by U.S. President George W. Bush took a beating in the domestic media on Friday.

Commentators were dismayed by a Foreign Ministry statement on Bush's plan to break from the Cold War theory that mutually assured destruction (MAD) is the best guarantee of deterrence and deploy a national missile defense (NMD) system.

"India's effusive response to the nuclear doctrine spelt out by U.S. President George W. Bush has still to take on board the fact that this will generate one of the most dangerous nuclear weapons arms races in the world in decades," Reuters quoted **** The Asian Age **** as saying.

In an article headlined "Nuclear Bush Fire Could Burn India", it said the Foreign Office was under instructions to ignore the implications of the NMD and had harped instead on Bush's plan to make unilateral cuts in nuclear weapons. Critics of the Bush plan say that a missile shield would spur China to spend more on nuclear missiles, sucking India into an arms race with its northern neighbor.

India conducted a series of nuclear tests in 1998 and, pointing to perceived threats from China and Pakistan, vowed to build a "credible minimum nuclear deterrent".

****** The Times of India **** noted that after its nuclear tests New Delhi reiterated its commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

"By backing the U.S. adventure on ballistic missile defense system, New Delhi is ensuring the opposite, since the first reaction of China will be to expand its arsenal and its second will be to set up a system of its own."

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**** The Times **** also criticized the government for overlooking the fact that Bush would "trash" Washington's 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Moscow to move away from nuclear orthodoxy.

"It ignores the fact this will happen only after Washington has thrown the ABM into the dustbin and introduced a dangerous dynamic into the stasis that the capability of mutually assured destruction has imposed on the nuclear weapons world," it said.

"It also reveals the dangerous casualness with which the present government changes national policy."

***** The Hindu ***** said India's "uncritical acclamation" of Bush's vision underlined its "eager willingness to jettison the right to strategic autonomy, if not also an independent foreign policy".

"... The objective reality can hardly be concealed: A move toward some form of strategic dependence on the U.S.," it said.

India has kept out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, arguing that it legitimized nuclear arms in the hands of a few nations -- with no commitment on them to disarm within a specified timeframe -- and forced others to renounce the option to build them.

New Delhi was castigated around the world when it conducted its nuclear tests but its relations with Washington have warmed dramatically since then. Commentators saw its response to the Bush vision as an extension of that post-Cold War thaw.

"New Delhi's alacrity in hailing Mr. Bush has much to do with its own spiralling sense of being a valued interlocutor of the new administration in Washington," **** The Hindu **** said.