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| Is South Asia heading for arms race? | | Pak to use modern US helicopters against terror | | EARLY TIMES DELHI BUREAU
NEW DELHI, JULY 24: India's Foreign Office has received a message from Islamabad, divulging Pakistan's fresh plea to the United States for supply of more modern helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to boost its anti-terror and anti-narcotics operations along its border with Afghanistan and Iran.
The mesage said that Pakistan had demanded additional helicopters equipped with 'bigger guns' during the Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao's recent visit to the United States. Pakistan needed both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters for 'reconnaissance and operations in the border areas,' Sherpao told US officials at a meeting of a joint working group on efforts to counter terrorism and drug smuggling.
The Pakistani Interior Minister was reported to have told the meeting that Pakistan would 'like bigger guns for the helicopters to make operations against well armed drug dealers in difficult terrain more effective.
On the other hand, Pakistan is building a new nuclear reactor to produce plutonium. This disclosure has just been made by the The Washington Post, citing independent analysts. The Washington-based experts said that satellite photos of the Khushab nuclear site appeared to show a heavy-water reactor under construction that would be capable of making plutonium for 40 to 50 atomic weapons each year, 20 times what Pakistan now produces, the newspaper said.
The experts warned that the project could spark a major rise in the region's arm race. "South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote in a technical assessment provided to The Washington Post.
Two other independent nuclear analysts, who reviewed commercially available satellite images of the nuclear site, confirmed the assessment's key findings, the US publication said. Pakistani officials did not comment on the report, but The Washington Post quoted a senior Pakistani official who spoke on the condition of anonymity as saying that a nuclear expansion in both the civilian and military areas was under way.
The report raised concerns about relations between Pakistan and India, the nuclear-armed neighbours, who have fought three wars since their 1947 Independence. According to foreign analysts, India is believed to have 30 to 35 nuclear warheads of a sophisticated plutonium design while Pakistan has an estimated 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which are generally heavier and harder to mount on a warhead.
The nuclear experts cited by The Washington Post said that a new heavy-water nuclear reactor would allow Pakistan to upgrade to a uranium-based design. The experts said that it appeared from the satellite photos that the new reactor was a few years from completion and would have a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more. By contrast, Pakistan's only existing plutonium-production reactor, which is adjacent to the construction site, has a capacity of 50 megawatts.
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