But they said that the new Indian government's proposal was still in its initial stages and it would take time to flesh out any three-way dialogue among Asia's declared nuclear states.
Foreign Minister Natwar Singh said on Tuesday that India and Pakistan "are now nuclear powers, and so is China".
"The three countries should get together and work out a common nuclear doctrine. This is a matter that needs to be discussed at the highest level," he said.
The remarks are a change in the tone from early statements of the previous government led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Last administration had called China the top threat which justified India's controversial 1998 decision to test nuclear weapons, and responded angrily when the United States urged a role for Beijing in easing tensions with Pakistan.
"Both the BJP and the new Congress government pursue a policy that those Americans who would hope to use India as a strategic balance to China would find troublesome," said Stephen Cohen, an expert on South Asian military affairs at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Natwar Singh, a 73-year-old career diplomat and stalwart of the ruling Congress party, also said on Tuesday that India and Pakistan would hold discussions on June 19-20 on easing nuclear tensions.
Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told AFP that Singh's statement on a three-way nuclear dialogue "looks like a new and innovative proposal which needs further and deeper examination".
Riffat Hussain, head of the strategic studies department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said that Singh seemed to suggest that Pakistan was an equal player in the "trilateral nuclear equation".