Nuclear dangers

During his recent trip to the US, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has been urging the Bush administration to adopt a "package approach" towards India and Pakistan vis-à-vis civilian nuclear technology co-operation.
"A selective and discriminatory approach", he said, "will have serious implications for the security environment in South Asia as well as for the international proliferation efforts." However, during an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seemed to suggest that Pakistan was willing to accept the deal offered to India.
In her prepared statement she said that the proposed nuclear deal would not lead to an arms race in South Asia. She based her assertion on the premise that the relations between the two countries had been consistently improving in the last three years. And, "to further improve relations and ensure strategic restraint on both sides, the United States is prepared to intensify significantly our diplomatic effort with both India and Pakistan."
The two countries, she further told the Committee, had even talked of resolving the Kashmir issue, thereby implying that if persuaded properly, Pakistan would be willing to accept the expansion of India's nuclear capability to any extent. Which contradicts Pakistan stated policy of maintaining a credible nuclear deterrence.
Aside from the imbalance that the offer of a civilian nuclear programme to India is to create in South Asia that Pakistan says it will try to counter by seeking help from its trusted ally China, if approved by Congress, it will seriously undermine the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
It makes a mockery of the Treaty, and the signal it sends to other countries harbouring nuclear ambitions is that unlike Iran, a NPT signatory, ignoring the NPT like India can actually prove to be rewarding. Senator Joseph Biden, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and a decent man who opposed the illegal and immoral Iraq war as well, while expressing concern over the issue recalled a past instance to point to imminent dangers ahead.
He reminded the Committee that whereas Canada had supplied plutonium and the US heavy water to India for peaceful purposes only, the country used it for its first nuclear explosion.
The same could happen again with the civilian nuclear deal. Another Committee member, Senator Barbara Boxer, opposing the proposed deal referred to expert opinion to make the disturbing disclosure that it would give India the ability to produce 50 nuclear bombs a year.
Notably, at present the country is said to have only a rudimentary technology for uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing. The present offer from the US will bring it highly sophisticated technology; and as Senator Biden pointed out in the light of past experience, there is strong likelihood that it would be diverted to bomb making.
That is a pretty frightful scenario for Pakistan, and indeed the international community. For, there are no permanent friends or foes in international relations - a friend today may become an enemy tomorrow. Which raises the question, what would the US do if further down the years, India stops counting it among its friends, and also adopts Washington's present style of bullying other countries?
In any case, the proposed civilian nuclear deal for India is about to set a dangerous precedent. It will aggravate the global threat of proliferation, and seriously undermine Pakistan's security. It is important, therefore, that the government continues to raise the issue at the pertinent forums in the US, where sensitivity to nuclear proliferation is very high.
The administration would certainly not like that, and might want to react by turning heat on Islamabad. But then it is not only Islamabad which needs Washington's support; at the present point in time the US too needs Pakistan for the furtherance of some of its extremely important objectives. Hence, Pakistan must keep on raising the issue as loudly and as effectively as possible.
The federal Cabinet's decision to approach the Nuclear Suppliers' Group for procurement of nuclear technology and materials for civilian use may be a non-starter unless the US agrees to allow such a relationship for which the US law would need to be amended.