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| Did India benefit from black market nuclear activity? | | Several Indians 'involved' in Khan's network:Musharraf | |
B L KAK
NEW DELHI, SEPT. 26: Yet another sensational disclosure by the Pakistan President, Gen. Parvez Musharraf: Several Indians were involved in disgraced Pak nuclear scientist, AQ Khan's Dubai-based network. Some of these Indians have vanished. Khan was running his network through two offices, one in Pakistan and the other in Dubai.
The disclosure is contained in Gen. Musharraf's autobiography, titled 'In The Line of Fire', which was launched in the United States on Monday. And Gen. Musharaf wrote: "There is a strong probability that he Indian uranium enrichment programme may also have its roots in the Dubai-based network and could be a copy of the Pakistani centrifuge design". Gen. Musharraf also wrote that India's efforts to build an atomic bomb in the 1990s could have benefited from a black market nuclear network run by disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist, AQ Khan.
India and Pakistan conducted successful nuclear tests in 1998, and have developed nuclear arsenals. Neither of them has signed the international nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Pakistan wants the United States to grant it the same offer of cooperation to develop its civil nuclear industry that Washington has extended to India over the past year. The United States has stonewalled Pakistan's requests, pointing to its recent history of nuclear proliferation.
AQ Khan, who had been regarded a national hero for his part in developing an atomic bomb, was put under house arrest in early 2004 after admitting selling nuclear parts and know-how to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Gen. Musharraf has described Khan's confession as one of the embarrassing points in his presidency, and said he had harboured doubts about the scientist for some time before evidence of Khan's dealings were shown to him by the CIA.
In a book released just over week after agreeing with Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to resume a stalled peace process, Gen. Musharraf described his fears that the Indian leader had fallen under the influence of New Delhi's old guard. Gen. Musharraf wrote in the memoir: "The initial signs of sincerity and flexibility that I sensed in Manmohan Singh seem to be withering away". Pakistan President added in a passage he said was written in June: "I think the Indian establishment -- the bureaucrats, diplomats, intelligence agencies, and perhaps even the military -- has gotten the better of him".
During a meeting on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Havana earlier this month, Manmohan Singh and Gen. Musharraf agreed to start talks again, and the Indian leader accepted an invitation to visit Pakistan, though no date has been set. And Gen. Musharraf, who is pressing for faster progress on resolving the Kashmir dispute, wrote in his book that he was still waiting for Manmohan Singh to come up with an "outside the box" solution.
Gen. Musharraf described Kargil as a military success, and though the episode backfired on Pakistan diplomatically at the time, he believed it helped pave the way for the latest peace process. "I would like to state emphatically that whatever movement has taken place so far in the direction of finding a solution to Kashmir is due considerably to the Kargil conflict", he said.
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...pg 8..
Pak President in the line of fire
Indian Army rubbishes his claim of victory in 1999
B L KAK
NEW DELHI, SEPT. 26: "Pakistan got a bloody nose in its fight against India on the Kargil hills in 1999. And yet, the Pak President, Gen. Parvez Musharraf has talked of victory in the Kargil conflict", asserted the Indian Army authorites in Delhi. The assertion was, clearly, meant to rubbish Gen. Musharraf;s claims of "victory" in the 1999 Kargil war and that a lesser Pakistani force had tied down four divisions of Indian soldiers.
A senior Indian Army official told EARLY TIMES: " Everyone knows who got a bloody nose and the circumstances under which the fighting ended". Speaking on conditon of anonymity, the Army official sought to recall that the fighting ended after then US President, Bill Clinton, summoned then Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, to Washington and directed him to order a ceasefire. And the official's loaded comment:"It was Pakistan who sued for peace and we responded immediately".
Pakistan President has made his claims in his book, In The Line of Fire which was released in New York on Monday. India's Army Headquarters also contested Gen. Musharraf's claims that five Pakistani units had tied down four Indian divisions during the fighting. The Army Headquarters reiterated that Pakistan had deployed six battalions of the Northern Light Infantry, then designated a paramilitary force, apart from units of the regular Pakistani Army, as also commandoes of the Special Services Group (SSG).
Against this, the Indian Army had sent in two divisions and two brigades, it was officially stated. In fact, the Army official, in his reply to a question by EARLY TIMES corespondent on Tuesday, also gave figures of casualties and arms and ammunition recovered at the end of the conflict to support his contention. Against 580 Indian soldiers who died, Pakistani casualties were a staggering 1,042, including 45 officers.
The official pointed recalled "We buried the bodies of 249 Pakistan soldiers and handed back five. The Pakistanis managed to recover the bodies of 725 soldiers, including 45 officers and 68 SSG commandoes". According to the official, it is a cardinal principle of warfare that the force that is attempting to evict intruders would suffer larger casualties, particularly since the intruders held the heights. In this case, the Pakistanis suffered bigger casualties because they had more forces deployed.
Meanwhile, Gen. Musharraf's is making waves in India, inviting lacerating rebuttals and sceptical previews on Kargil and other controversial issues, but former Army Chief, Gen. VP Malik, was emphatic that it should not be banned. A Hindi version of the book titled 'Agnipath' after an Indian movie featuring Amitabh Bachchan, has been delayed by a couple of days. Even this has become subject of speculation, with some anchors claiming that the Indian Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had somehow got involved.
Gen. VP Malik, who supervised India's response in the mid-1999 Kargil standoff, rejected Gen Musharraf's claim in the book on how the conflict began, but said the book should not be banned. Gen Musharraf had surprised the Indian Army in the run up to the conflict, Gen Malik said in a TV discussion. "Now he has surprised us again with a new preposterous allegation that we were about to attack (across the LoC)".
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