Friday, November 03, 2006
China to seek nuclear favours for Pakistan
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: The 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which will need to make a country-specific exception for India as part of a series of steps to finalise the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement, may be asked by China to make a similar exception for Pakistan, according to former United States deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott.
Addressing a joint meeting with former Indian external affairs minister Jaswant Singh at the John Hopkins University, Talbott said that this is what he had gathered during his meeting with Chinese officials on a recent visit to that country. Singh, who held the foreign affairs portfolio under the Vajpayee government and had held 13 meetings with Talbott to get the Indo-US strategic dialogue rolling, said that at one point during the Kargil war, India noted a movement of Pakistani missiles near Jehlum but had come to the conclusion that the redeployment was of a diversionary nature and that it would therefore be erroneous for India to respond in kind.
He said that there was no alternative to peace with Pakistan, while pointing out that it was not ââ¬Åstate actorsââ¬Â who caused India concern, but non-state actors who posed the greater danger. Aside from fears that they could gain access to weapons of mass destruction, he noted that they would need no more than a glass full of some lethal biological compound to cause untold havoc.
Talbot told the meeting, which included a question-answer interlude, that while the US was negotiating with India, it was carrying out a parallel dialogue with Pakistan. US experts during the 1999 Kargil conflict, he disclosed, were apprehensive of things getting out of hand, given that both countries were nuclear powers and had an unsettled dispute over Kashmir. He said that when former president Bill Clinton had taken Nawaz Sharif aside during the latterââ¬â¢s July 4 visit to Washington, and told him of certain military movements in Pakistan, the then Pakistani prime minister had no idea to what he was referring.
As this point, Singh said that Pakistan had done the right thing by reversing its strategy of occupying certain posts in Kargil. He also said that Kargil represented a ââ¬Åwatershedââ¬Â in Indo-US relations. It was the first time, he said, that Washington had ââ¬Årecognised ground realityââ¬Â. India had taken immediate note of America taking a ââ¬Åmoral standââ¬Â and pressing Pakistan to withdraw from Kargil, he added. Talbott said that while India and the US had put the Cold War behind them and entered into a growing strategic relationship, their nuclear disagreements were not yet behind them. As a result, he said that Indo-US relations might be conducted on a narrower band than the commonality of their interests would warrant. However, he was confident that the Indo-US nuclear agreement would come through Congress this year. He conceded that some congressional actions would trouble India. He said that the difficulty with the nuclear deal, which is hanging fire in Congress, was that if India were granted exception under the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), one could not remain confident that New Delhi alone would remain the exception.
He noted that President George W Bush had granted India that exception. Thus the question remained: who else was going to demand the same exception? Already some countries had raised their hands. Such factors were already at work in Northeast Asia and the Middle East. From a rule-based regime, a shift had been made in favour of a regime based on value judgments. Current thinking dictated that good countries deserved leniency and bad countries needed extra stringency. But the problem, he stressed, was that bad countries did not think that they were bad, one example being North Korea.
Answering a question about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Talbott said that the US Senateââ¬â¢s failure to ratify the treaty represented a ââ¬Åblack dayââ¬Â for the cause of non-proliferation. This, he said, provided an example of one branch of the US government knocking out the light from under another branch.
In answer to another question, the former Indian external affairs minister said that he did not hold US policy towards Pakistan favourably. But he agreed, however, that India lived in a troubled neighbourhood and should not expect Washington to pull its chestnuts out of the fire. It was an Indian problem, he said, and India should settle it by managing its relations with its neighbours.
Noting that India had unsettled land disputes with both Pakistan and China, he complained that the US ââ¬Åbolsters upââ¬Â Pakistan, encouraging it to want to ââ¬Åbox above its weightââ¬Â. But when Pakistan ââ¬Åfloundersââ¬Â, it creates a difficult situation for India. Washington, he stressed, should not act as an ââ¬Åexternal equaliserââ¬Â in the region, adding it was India that often paid the price for US policy in South Asia.
But he went on to note that when confronted with the Kargil conflict, Washington had broken out of its ââ¬Åzero-sum mentality,ââ¬Â declaring that it was the US, India and China that now formed a triangle, the lines of which were no longer fuzzy. Replying to a question on Pakistan, Singh said that Islamabad needed to change. It needed democracy and needed to address the problem of radical groups operating on its soil. All states in the region, not just India, had the right to feel secure, he added.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\11\03\story_3-11-2006_pg7_24