NEW DELHI: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has approved a Pakistani proposal seeking voluntary safeguards for the 300 MW Chashma nuclear Power plants being built by a Chinese company. The Proposal was cleared by the IAEA board of S0vernors at a meeting held at its Vienna headquarters between June 15 and 20. This was a major success for Pakistan after the French withdrew their offer to help Pakistan’s nuclear program. There is the fear that China may also retrace her steps.
Islamabad hushed through the agreement and present indications is that the plant will be completed by the end of the 1990s. Interestingly this is the first nuclear power plant export order for China.
The IAEA decision has brought Pakistan’s nuclear program into the limelight again. In February this year the country’s nuclear program became the matter of much controversy when a foreign secretary General Mahryar Khan disclosed that Islamabad had the capability to assemble at least one nuclear weapon. To Pakistan watchers he was not saying anything new but the fact that he said it in Washington made people think that the suave Pathan was trying to blackmail the US and sending the signal that if the US Stopped its military and economic aid. Islamabad would pursue its Islamib bomb program more vigorously.
Apart from Khan’s statements there was the disclosure by American intelligence agencies that Pakistan had clandestinely imported from Turkey a specific part needed in nuclear weapons. The development once again highlighted the clandestine component of Pakistan’s “peaceful nuclear program.”
These bits and pieces of information put together and read along with other developments in Islamabad’s nuclear program prompted the international strategic community to conclude that Islamabad was a nuclear weapon power like Israel the only difference being the number of weapons assembled by each country.
What are the implications for Indian security? Both India and Pakistan have signed an agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear installations and exchange the information necessary in this regard.
The question that bothers the Indian strategic community is: Who has control of nuclear weapons in Pakistan? Ever since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto declared that she had been kept in the dark about her country’s nuclear program this question has been haunting every thinking Indian
Defence and foreign policy is the domain of the armed forces in Pakistan. This has been amply demonstrated on a number of occasions in the past. Pakistan’s Policy towards the Afghan crisis is one example. There is evidence that even the generals are not a united act.
In these circumstances Indian decision-makers are pondering on the extent to which Nawaz Sharif or some other elected head of government can be depended upon to keep Pakistan’s nuclear weapons under control.
India may have to live indefinitely with such uncertainty.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 24, 1992
