London, (PTI) Pakistan’s chief of army staff, Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, has admitted wrong assessment and mistakes regarding Stachen glacies and the abortive Ajghan rebel assault on Jalalabad.

Gen Beg also for the first time, in an interview with the Jane Defence Weekly, spoke of Islamabad’s quest for nuclear capability as (a meaningful deterrent.)

In what has been described in defence circle here as (surprising candor on sensitive military issues), Gen Beg had blamed the rebels’ setback in Jalalabad in February on two factors.

First, he said, the rebels make a mistake in shit from the (strategy of strangulation) to frontal assaults on Major Urban centres.

Secondly, (United States interests has been waning since the soviet left Afghanistan. From January to April 1989, there was no. US. military support for the Mujahedin. Only after May or June did the military hardware start coming freom the U.S.), He said.

He said :( The situation is in our favour, since we hace just a brigade there, while India has four brigades committed there. In the last five years, Pakistan has had 97 battle casualties, while another 200 m4en hace died due to weather. This compares to 1,200 casualties of India in the same period.

(Siachen is mainly a logistics battle with Pakistan army managing to establish truckable and jeepable roads leading to all our gun positions and we only use helicopters for lifting casualties,) he said.

Apart from the missiles tested last February, which have a range of 300 KM, Gen Beg said that the army was developing another missile with a 600 KM range, although) it is not so sophisticated in terms of guidance system because we don’t have technology)”

He said that (both the nuclear option and the missiles act as a deterrence and these in turn con tribute to the total fighting ability of the army which then acts as a detternent to the enemy).”

In this, Gen Beg is probably the first authoritative Pakistani to have publicly viewed the country’s quest for a nucleare capability as (a meaningful detterent).

He said: (we are not face) with a two-front situation and a military threat does not exist from Afghanistan,)

Regarding Pakistan army doctrine, which is to ge tested in (Zarb-E-Monim)” Gen Beg said: (in the past, we were pursuing a defensive policy, now there is a big change since we are shifting to a policy of offensive defence should there be a war, the pakistan army plans to take the ware into India, launching a sizeable offensive on Indian territory).

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 20, 1989