South Asia nuclear upgrades worry United States
* Experts fear proliferation chances will grow with size of nuclear programmes of India and Pakistan
* New administration does not see Pakistan’s programme in isolation from India’s
* Defence Intelligence Agency director says Pakistan has taken important steps but vulnerabilities still exist
Daily Times Monitor
dailytimes.com.pk\05\29\story_29-5-2009_pg7_13
LAHORE: Next year Pakistan will start churning out plutonium for its nuclear arsenal, which will eventually include warheads for ballistic missiles and cruise missiles capable of being launched from ships, submarines or aircraft.
In India, engineers are designing cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads. India is also trying to equip its Agni missiles with such warheads and to deploy them on submarines.
US and allied officials and experts who have tracked developments in South Asia have grown increasingly worried over the rapid growth of the region’s nuclear programmes, according to Washington Post.
India and Pakistan see their nuclear programmes as vital points of leverage in an arms race that has begun to take on the pace and diversity of US-Russian nuclear competition during the Cold War.
“More vulnerabilities. More stuff in production. More stuff in transit,” when it is more vulnerable to theft, said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, formerly the CIA’s top official on weapons of mass destruction and the Energy Department’s director of intelligence during the George W Bush administration.
Programme size: US experts also worry that as the size of the programmes grows, chances increase that a rogue scientist or military officer will attempt to sell nuclear parts or know-how.
Indian officials say efforts are underway to improve and test a powerful thermonuclear warhead. “Delivery system-wise, India is doing fine,” said Bharat Karnad, a former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board and a professor of national security studies at New Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research.
US officials say narrow appeals to the two countries to slow their weapons work will probably fail. “We have to think of dealing with the South Asian problem not on a purely regional basis, but in the context of a more global approach,” Gary Samore, the senior White House non-proliferation adviser.
Samore said the “Pakistani government has always said they will do that in conjunction with India. The Indians have always said ‘we can’t take steps unless similar steps are taken by China and the other nuclear states,’ and very quickly you end up with a situation where it’s hard to make progress.”
Some experts worry, however, that the United States may not have the luxury of waiting to negotiate a treaty that would curtail the global production of fissile materials – a pact that President Obama says he hopes to complete during his first term.
Lt-Gen Michael Maples, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, told senators days before his retirement in March that “Pakistan continues to develop its nuclear infrastructure, expand nuclear weapons stockpiles, and seek more advanced warheads and delivery systems.” He added that although Pakistan has “taken important steps to safeguard its nuclear weapons . . . vulnerabilities still exist”.
Pakistani officials dismiss suggestions of an acceleration in South Asia’s arms race. “If two are sufficient, why build 10?” asked Brig Nazir Ahmed Butt, defence attache in Pakistan’s embassy in Washington. “We’re not in a numbers game. People should not take a technological upgrade for an expansion.”
Abdul Mannan, director of transport and waste safety for Pakistan’s nuclear regulatory authority, said in a 2007 presentation that “a country like Pakistan is not well equipped” to contain radioactive fallout from an attack on a nuclear shipment.
Isolation: While Pakistan’s nuclear programme has lately attracted the most worry, because of the close proximity to the Taliban insurgents, many US experts say that it should not be considered in isolation from India’s nuclear expansion.
Some experts say that a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that Bush signed with India in October benefits the country’s weapons programmes, because it sanctions India’s import of uranium and allows the military to draw on enriched uranium produced by eight reactors that might otherwise be needed for civil power. |
