Thursday, 25 September 2008
Minister of State Dr Ishfaq Ahmad on Wednesday said with the signing of Indo-US nuclear deal, the world has now opened its doors for most advanced technology to India, therefore, Pakistan should also try to persuade international community to sign similar deals with Pakistan.
He was addressing a seminar on "Indo-US Nuclear Deal" here at Institute of Strategic Studies in collaboration with the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute. Dr Ishfaq Ahmad said prior to 2005, nuclear climate in the world was going through a change but disintegration of USSR and the events of 9/11 compelled India to review its foreign policy.
He said since India always had an ambition of emerging as a global power, it felt that there was a need to build a strategic partnership with the US. Speaking at the occasion, the Director General, Institute of Strategic Studies, former Ambassador Tanvir Ahmad Khan, briefly touched upon the history of the Indo-US nuclear deal.
He said that the approval of the India Safeguards Agreement by the IAEA on August 1, 2008 must be described as a notable success of the closely orchestrated Indian and American diplomacy.
He said India was free to add a large number of warheads between now and 2014 and its military facilities could do that in perpetuity. It will become more imperative than ever before to work out a South Asian strategic restraint regime.
Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, Assistant Professor, Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad was of the view that the nuclear commerce was emerging as one of the lucrative businesses in the United States.
He said the revision in 123 Agreement would expand the opportunities for Indo-US cooperation, but would weaken the United Nations Resolution 1540.He said India specific exemption from NSG rules and IAEA safeguards' standards did not bring India into the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
The agreed arrangement between NSG and India would further undermine the values of NSG and weaken the already beleaguered NPT, he added. He was of the view that the world was at the threshold of a new age of nuclear expansionism, which entailed a New Global Nuclear Order.
In his presentation Brig (Retd) Naeem Ahmad Salik, ACDA, Strategic Planning Division said that after the materialization of the deal, India will become capable of increasing its fissile material production, which will compel Pakistan to look towards other avenues in order to maintain credible minimum deterrence. He said that Pakistan's nuclear policy had always had a close linkage with India.
Malik Qasim Mustafa, Research Fellow, ISSI, said that creating a "strategic partnership" by granting exceptions and waivers would bring wide-ranging implications for the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Maria Sultan, Director South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, Islamabad, said that security could not be achieved through the continued reliance on nuclear weapons. She said it could only be achieved through international cooperation in developing and maintaining effective, binding, and verifiable multilateral agreements, such as embodied in the NPT and the CTBT.