Any government which takes power in Pakistan would have three choices: to expand, continue or cut back Pakistan's nuclear activities. Initially, Pakistan is believed to have working on reprocessing facilities in Chashma and Rawalpindi's PINSTECH and "New Labs" complex. The Chashma plant, the largest, is designed to have a 100-tonne reprocessing capacity and to be capable of producing 100 to 200 kilograms of plutonium in a year when completed. The "New Labs" are able to extract ten to twenty kilograms of plutonium. Pakistan also has two small heavy-water production plants at Multan and Karachi and a fuel fabrication facility at Chashma-Kudian.
Pak assurance and effects
Fro m the beginning Pakistan had claimed that the Kahuta facility is intended to manufacture only Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) for its civilian nuclear programme. On the issue analysts questioned because Pakistan's sole operating power reactor did not need LEU nor the country realistically expected to construct a LEU-fuelled reactor despite its plan to build five of them. At the same, Pakistan declined to permit verification of its assurances to Washington that it will not enrich uranium above the five per cent level. At the time most experts believed that Pakistan has succeeded in manufacturing High Enriched Uranium, and it was difficult to estimate how much of this weapons material it has already produced. In addition to this Pakistan and China signed the Border Agreement in 1963 that laid the foundation stone of Sino-Pak Axis, which had grown stronger since then. The Chinese stood with Pakistan in the Indo-Pak War in 1965 and 1971 and helped in a long way in helping Pakistan to build its nuclear capability and missile programme. China's support for Pakistan has enabled that country to play a role in South Asia, South West and Central Asia, larger than its population, economy ordomestic technological capacity allowed it to play. At the close of eighties the world became confirmed that Pakistan possesses nuclear bomb. The People's Republic of China is in lead role in making Pakistan a powerful nuclear power in the region. In response to India's second explosion. Islamabad detonated its nuclear device in May 1998, and evened its nuclear account with India.
Role of United States
Formerly, the US had, for some years pursued a variety of initiatives to persuade India and Pakistan to abandon their nuclear weapons programmes and to accept comprehensive international safeguards on all their nuclear activities. To this end, Clinton administration proposed a conference of nine states, comprising the five established nuclear-weapon states, along with Japan, Germany, India and Pakistan. This and previous similar proposals were rejected by India, which countered with demands that other potential weapon states, such as Iran and North Korea, should be invited, and that regional limitations would only be acceptable if they were accepted by China. Because, the USA had not accepted the participation of Iran and North Korea hence such initiatives lapsed. One recent approach centred on the concept of containment, designed to 'cap' the production of fissile material for weapons purposes, which would hopefully be followed by "roll back". To this end, India and the USA jointly sponsored a UN General Assembly resolution in 1993 calling for negotiations for a cut-off convention, the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).
However, despite the widespread international support for a FMCT, formal negotiations on cut-off have yet to begin. Apart from international efforts bilateral confidence-building measures between India an d Pakist an to re d uce the p ro spe cts o f confrontation have been limited. In 1990, each side ratified a treaty not to attack the other's nuclear installations, and at the end of 1991, they provided one another with a list showing the location of all their nuclear plants, even though the respective lists were regarded as not being wholly accurate. Early in 1994, India proposed a bilateral agreement for a 'no first use' of nuclear weapons and an extension of the 'no attack' treaty to cover civilian and industrial targets as well as nuclear installations. For long both countries engaged in a conventional arms race including sophisticated technology and equipment capable of delivering nuclear weapon. In 1994, India reversed a four-year trend of reduced allocations for defence, and despite its much smaller economy, Pakistan pushed its own expenditures yet higher. By the time both lost their patrons: India, the former USSR; and Pakistan, the USA.
Post -explosion developments
Following the 1998 tests the question of nuclear proliferation had reopened. The test were ambiguously military including one claimed to be of a sophisticated thermo- nuclear device. Their declared purpose was "to help the design of nuclear weapons of different yields and different delivery systems. Until May 1998, the re gio n was satisfie d with "existential deterrence", which kept both countries, nuclear capability in ambiguity and in a non-weaponised state. The 1998 demonstration of capability by Pakistan was carried out in something of a crisis situation. There was intense international pressure on Pakistan, including threatened punishments (sticks) and possible inducements (carrots), if it refrained from testing. Pakistan chose to suffer the sticks because it considered that a lack of response would erode the credibility of deterrence, which required not just demonstration of the "capability" but also demonstration of the "will" to respond. Since 1998, the nuclear bomb has been a symbol of India's power and prestige, but the nuclear domain has always stood as a site within which India's unique moral judgement could be applied and exihibited. Dominant thinking in international relations finds it hard to reconcile the two trends, and many have scratched their heads in puzzlement over the incongruity of India's peaceful intentions and hard power hype, or the juxtaposition of "the land of Gandhi" and the bomb. By explosions, in one stroke, the dam broke sweeping away the premise of virtually all of the Western, European, and Japanese-sponsored dialogues. This premise was that South Asians could be dissuaded, via dialogue, from exercising the nuclear option, or if they did possess nuclear weapons, from testing and declaring that they were nuclear weapons states. |
