[sacw] SAAN Post (5 June 00)

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Mon, 5 Jun 2000 14:01:39 +0200


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South Asians Against Nukes Post
3 June 2000
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#1. India Pakistan Nuclear tests of of May 1998: Life, two years later...
#2. India: Greens warn against N-plant in Sunderbans
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#1.

The News on Sunday
4 June 2000

"http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/may2000 -weekly/nos-28-05-2000/enc.htm"

LIFE, TWO YEARS LATER..

Life, two years later... The nuclear blasts by Pakistan and
India were followed by promises of development and end to arms race in
the subcontinent.
On the second anniversary of the Chaghai explosions, Nadeem Iqbal asks
experts how things have moved on since then

Exactly two years have passed since Pakistan officially declared its
nuclear capability with explosions at Chaghai -- 17 days after India
had conducted its own nuclear tests at Pokhran. Supposedly, having
conducted the nuclear tests, Pakistan now had an effective deterrent
against any Indian aggressive designs. It was also claimed that since
both India and Pakistan now publicly possessed nuclear weapons, it
will help reduce the conventional arms race in the subcontinent and
the two countries will be able to allocate a much bigger proportion of
their budget on social sector development. It turned out be a false
promise. The nuclear blasts by India and Pakistan in May 1998 were
followed some months later by a meeting between Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore in February
1999. The two prime ministers pledged to employ dialogue for resolving
all outstanding issues. Soon afterwards came Kargil, followed by the
coup against the Sharif government in October.
Since then the focus of Islamabad's foreign policy has remained on
trying to establish the credibility of the Pervez Musharraf government
with world powers, while New Delhi has been seeking to isolate
Islamabad internationally over Pakistan's 'adventurism' in Kargil. Not
only this, but by increasing defence expenditure in the Indian budget,
the Bharatiya Janata Party government has practically ensured a
continuation of the conventional weapons' race in the subcontinent. So
did the explosions change anything? Dr. Tanvir Ahmed Khan, chairman of
the government-funded Institute of Strategic Studies (ISS) says that from
Pakistan's perspective the working assumption as regard to India remains
unchanged. Under this assumption Pakistan needed a strategic equaliser
after India exploded its nuclear device on May 11, 1998. The foreign
security advisers still think that Pakistan's decision to carry out
tests was to restore the strategic balance. This in a way ensured that
no major conventional war will break out.
"Under this assumption, one reason why Kargil remained a local affair
was that nuclear weapon restrained the two sides," explains Dr Tanvir.
"However, Pakistan's cost for going nuclear was quite high. The tests
were followed by the freezing of the foreign currency accounts. There
was flight of capital, and sanctions imposed by the US and other
countries increased the cost of achieving strategic parity with
India." Lt. Gen. (retd) Talat Masood, former secretary defence
production, says the term strategic parity should not be interpreted only
in the military sense. According to him, "strategic parity is only
sustainable when other elements of a nation's power -- economic
security and political and institutional buildup -- are at par with
other elements."
He adds that "Nuclear power can only be an advantage when all these
elements are healthy. In Pakistan's case, there is great asymmetry
among the nuclear power and other elements. Hence, nuclear capability
has proven to be a liability. We have to first determine what our
national goals are. If these are to advance the cause of a common man,
then the nuclear detonation failed to do so." Physicist and well-known
peace campaigner Pervez Hoodbhoy builds on the points raised by Lt.
Gen. (retd) Masood and says: "Today Pakistan is beset with much more
serious problems than was the case two years ago (before the nuclear
tests). The government, which celebrated the tests is no more in
power. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been convicted and serving life
imprisonment. We are confronted with a 28 per cent increase in Indian
defence budget and do not have the strength to respond to it."
Not that the Sharif government didn't have an idea what was in store
for the country's economy . A minister in the sacked Sharif cabinet
confides with TNS: "We knew if we went ahead with the test it would be
an economic disaster. But had we not gone ahead, it would have been a
devastating blow politically. So, soon after the test, the sad but
inevitable decision of freezing foreign currency accounts was taken.
Another decision which could not be implemented was to close down the
private money changers and bringing the official rate of dollar at par
with the rate in the open market." The ex-minister continues that after
the blasts, the next task was to build up Pakistan's image as a responsible
nuclear state, "without in any way jeopardising regional stability." The
Lahore Declaration was part of this image-building exercise, he says
and adds, "In fact, by establishing economic ties and releasing
Indians who were languishing in Pakistani jails, the Sharif government
wanted to pave the way for a dialogue on Kashmir." The ex-minister
maintains the present economic sanctions are not due to nuclear
detonation, but due to the October 12 coup. "Our policy was working.
The process of lifting the sanctions had begun and the passage of
Brown Amendment had removed the ban on Pakistan buying military hardware.
But now the process has been stalled," he says. But what about Kargil?
"Kargil was unfortunate. But the line of control in Kashmir is always
hot, and incidents like Kargil are usual local affairs. Only this
time, it happened just before the election in India and Vajpayee
government exploited it successfully in its poll campaign."
Ever since the nuclear explosions, one of the issues which has
consumed much energy of the experts is should or shouldn't Pakistan
sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Dr. Hoodbhoy blames the
delay in the CTBT signing on an attitude which is "devoid of any
regard to long term interests of the country." "We could have singed
CTBT, without affecting the nuclear assets. This the army-led
government tried very hard to achieve, but like in the case of the
blasphemy law, it had to retreat," he says and then elaborates how the
foreign policy of Pakistan is shaped today. "The rise of the jehadi
movement has taken away the prerogative of the foreign policy-making
from the government. Instead, decisions regarding Kashmir, Afghanistan
or CTBT are made in the seminaries." Dr. Tanvir, on the other hand,
says that generally the climate is not hostile for signing CTBT. In
fact it is favourable.
"In fact the reason why the issue is still pending is that in the
post-test negotiations with international community led by the US, the
situation started undergoing a change," the ISS chairman says. He
explains: "The US conducted supposedly parallel negotiations with
Pakistan and India. But it seems that there is a qualitative
difference between what the US discusses with India and what it is
discussing with Pakistan. "It seems as if the US was gradually moving
towards accepting India as a de facto nuclear power. It is giving
concessions to India by lifting sanctions and transferring technology.
India has really transformed its relationship with the US without
signing the CTBT. In the case of Pakistan, the US objective seems to
be to force us to cap and then roll back the nuclear programme. In
this context signing CTBT is being considered as the step which could
land Pakistan on the slippery ground." According to Dr. Tanvir, at
present, CTBT is an emotional issue with people not understanding why
the military would want to give up what is generally regarded as its
essential requirement.
Dr Tanvir and Lt. Gen. (retd) Talat Masood agree that in future,
Pakistan will be under much more pressure from international community
than India to renounce its nuclear capability. "The future success of
Pakistani diplomacy will be measured by its achievement in promoting
the peace-and-restraint regime with India," Dr. Tanvir states. Lt Gen
Masood adds: "We have a very exaggerated view of the nuclear power.
The emerging global economy in which states are interdependent has
somewhat devalued the role of nuclear power. Although China, the US
and Russia have nuclear weapons, they are there more to play a global
role unlike Pakistan and India which are essentially regional powers." He
argues that Pakistan has to maintain conventional capability: "If it erodes
completely, we would lower the nuclear threshold to a point where it will
cease to be a deterrent. Also conventional capability is essential to
prevent lowest level insurgencies and conflict from escalation." At
the same time Lt. Gen Masood advises necessary adjustments in the
policy. He says policy-makers must realise that our economy does not
have the resilience to afford high-profile Afghanistan and Kashmir
policies.
Maintaining the conventional weapon capability is going to cost us,
and not only in monetary terms. There seems to be a consensus among
experts that our defence budget cannot be reduced in near future --
especially considering the recent increase in the defence allocation
of India, an economy eight times larger than ours and which is
developing 6-7 per cent each year.
Says Dr Hoodbhoy: "The trend is to match India to the extent the
Pakistan government can. Therefore, the production of fissile material
and designing and development of nuclear weapons and missiles is going
on at a very fast pace. We are spending huge amounts of money on it,
which is not declared in any official document." He warns: "Pakistan
needs to realise that its survival is not principally threatened by
the forces across the border, but by the breakdown of civil society
and the state of ungovernability the society is moving towards."
In future
Pakistan will be under much more pressure from international community
than India to renounce its nuclear capability. The future success of
Pakistani diplomacy will be measured by its achievement in promoting
the peace-and-restraint regime with India," says Dr Tanvir Ahmed Khan
"We knew if we went ahead with the test it would be an economic
disaster. But had we not gone ahead, it would have been a devastating
blow politically. So, soon after the test, the sad but inevitable
decision of freezing foreign currency accounts was taken..., says a
minister in the Sharif cabinet
The rise
The rise of the jehadi movement has taken away the prerogative of the
foreign policy-making from the government. Instead, decisions regarding
Kashmir, Afghanistan or CTBT are made in the seminaries," says Dr Pervez
Hoodbhoy.

Lt. Gen. (retd) Talat Masood, former secretary defence production:
"The term strategic parity should not be interpreted only in the
military sense. Srategic parity is only sustainable when other
elements of a nation's power -- economic security and political and
institutional buildup -- are at par with other elements.
__________

#2.

Refiff on the Net
3 June 2000

Greens warn against N-plant in Sunderbans

The installation of a nuclear power plant in the Sunderbans, the
mangrove forest which has been declared a world heritage site, is like
inviting environmental disaster, according to environmentalists.

The Ganatantrik Nagarik Samiti, a Howrah-based non-governmental
organisation working for protection of the environment in West Bengal,
on Friday said the project should be treated as a violation of the
fundamental right (Article 21) ensuring protection to life. The plant
will pose a serious health hazard to people in the vicinity, apart from
disturbing the fragile eco-system in the protected mangrove forest.

Samiti general secretary Subhas Dutta said that they were not against
eco-friendly development projects or setting up of such plants
elsewhere, but were concerned about the possible hazards the project
will pose to the ecologically sensitive Sunderbans. The project would
cause large-scale denudation of the mangrove forest, which is being
depleted rapidly.

The Supreme Court had directed that "there will be no felling of trees
in any forest, public or private land". The Centre's move would
obviously violate this directive, Dutta pointed out.

The samiti expressed concern about the storage, transportation and
disposal of radioactive material or waste, which pose a risk to the
environment and human beings. It demanded a debate on the issue.

Criticising an expert's comment that the nuclear power plant was
eco-friendly and totally safe, the samiti's experts countered that no
one could guarantee this.

The Centre should relocate the project, the samiti said.

UNI