US objects to China-Pakistan nuclear deal

[T-Faz]

US objects to China-Pakistan nuclear deal. Hypocritical

The Obama administration objects to China selling nuclear reactors to Pakistan, which has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But the US sealed a similar deal with India.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreig...-to-China-Pakistan-nuclear-deal.-Hypocritical

China wants to sell two nuclear reactors to Pakistan. The Obama administration thinks that’s a bad idea – but how to oppose that plan while dodging charges of hypocrisy, given the administration only last year sealed a US deal to supply India with civilian nuclear equipment? And how to press to halt the intended sale while preserving relations with two crucial partners, China and Pakistan?

The China-Pakistan deal will come up next week when the 46-country Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meets in New Zealand.

The US will argue – somewhat uncomfortably, given the US-India deal – that the proposed sale to Pakistan violates the international body’s standards. China is expected to counter that what would be a lucrative deal for one of its state-owned companies should be “grandfathered” because the two reactors are part of a deal that actually predates China’s 2004 membership in the NSG, which monitors nuclear transactions.

Administration officials this week tried to put diplomatic dressing on US opposition to the sale.

“We have asked China to clarify the details of its sale of additional nuclear reactors to Pakistan,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, at a briefing Tuesday. The US does not buy the Chinese argument that this sale should be considered part of a preexisting deal with Pakistan, he added.

“This appears to extend beyond cooperation that was grandfathered when China was approved for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” he said.

A day earlier, State Department spokesman Gordon DuGuid said the US “expects Beijing to cooperate with Pakistan in ways consistent with Chinese nonproliferation obligations.” As a signatory to the NSG, China would appear to be violating international guidelines against selling nuclear materials to a non-signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Like India, Pakistan has never joined the NPT.

The US stance is thus that China would require an exemption from the NSG to complete the two-reactor sale – a hard-won nod the US achieved for the India deal, but one US officials doubt would be forthcoming from the group in the China-Pakistan case.

“We believe that such [China-Pakistan] cooperation would require a specific exemption approved by consensus of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, as was done for India,” Mr. Crowley said, adding that the US is seeking to apply the same test of international scrutiny as was required for the US-India deal. “We’re not looking at any difference between the two.”

But some nuclear nonproliferation experts say the US opened the door to deals like China’s by pursuing a deal with India that will provide nuclear materials and technology to a country that is a non-signatory of the NPT and thus outside international inspection requirements.

“Two wrongs make a wrong, but it was to be expected once we made the case for an exemption [for the US-India deal],” says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington.

China may very well see the controversy coming and move to put off any discussion of the sale at the NSG, Mr. Sokolski says. US officials have told him that China is now expected to say the deal is still in negotiations, making any NSG discussion premature.

But Sokolski says that sooner or later the US, which wants China’s cooperation on other issues like Iran, will still be faced with the repercussions of the US-India nuclear agreement.

“The Chinese will back off for the moment to prevent embarrassment,” he says. “But in the long run the problem will persist, and when it comes back around I fear we will roll.”

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

US throws spanner in Pak-China nuke deal

DESPITE the fact that neither Pakistan nor China have publicly announced a nuclear energy cooperation deal, nor have they made any overt efforts to hide, the US had expressed a tacit approval to the nascent accord. However, now information reaching Islamabad indicates that the US is ruing over the budding cooperation. US State Department spokesman Gordon DuGuid said the U.S. government “has reiterated to the Chinese government that the United States expects Beijing to cooperate with Pakistan in ways consistent with Chinese non-proliferation obligations.” Simultaneously, a US official (you guessed it, on conditions of anonymity) has said, “Additional nuclear cooperation with Pakistan beyond those specific projects that were grandfathered in 2004 would require consensus approval by the NSG, which we believe is extremely unlikely.” Earlier, when the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not raise the issue with her Chinese counterparts during a visit to China, the US State Department had indicated that it expected China and Pakistan to conclude a nuclear deal. Now according to The Washington Post, the mouth piece of the US government, t*he Obama administration has decided to object to a lucrative deal in which a state-owned Chinese company would supply Pakistan with two nuclear reactors.*The deal is expected to be discussed next week at a meeting in New Zealand of the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which monitors such transactions. The NSG is a group of nuclear supplier countries which seeks to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons by implementing guidelines for nuclear exports and nuclear related exports.
The Washington Post** *says experts allege that the Pak-China agreement will be a violation of international guidelines forbidding nuclear exports to countries that have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or do not have international safeguards on reactors. Pakistan has not signed the NPT. China as suggested the deal dates back to before it joined the NSG in 2004, which, according to analysts, would exclude the Pak-China deal from the purview of any obligations to the NSG. But US officials have now decided to object. Of course, the Daily Mail observes that the US had not only violated the NPT, but had also violated the Hyde Act 2006, by finalizing a similar deal with India regarding cooperation on nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The fact that Pakistan has agreed that all nuclear cooperation between China and Pakistan will be subject to IAEA safeguards should be enough to appease US officials. The question arises as to why these sudden developments. The Daily Mail does not view these developments in isolation but finds congruence in them. Take the announcement that the US may not keep its deadline in commencing its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now connect the dots with the news that the United States is working with the Afghan government to explore nearly $1 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, which the State Department said on Monday. A team of US geologists and Pentagon officials has discovered vast mineral wealth in Afghanistan, conceivably enough to turn the scarred and impoverished country into one of the world’s most lucrative mining centres. Now come to US arm twisting Pakistan for its alleged complicity in the botched Times Square bombing incident.
The US urging Pakistan to attack North Waziristan simultaneously as ISAF operations in Kandahar commence. Now the Daily Mail finds another development in the series equally abhorrent: the restrictions imposed by US on the utilization of F-16C/D Block 52 by Pakistan. The Assistant Secretary of State Dr. John Hillen revealed details of the plan for safeguarding defence trade technology exported to Pakistan – information that is rarely made public. According to the Assistant Secretary, the plan requires: · site surveys and end-use monitoring, including annual inventory check of all equipment related to the F-16s, by US officials; · dedicated facilities for storage of spare parts and maintenance; strict limitations on access to the planes; · complete segregation of the F-16s from third country-origin aircraft; express permission from the US government before Pakistan can fly the planes outside of its own airspace; · full compliance with the security plan before the planes, weapons and equipment can be delivered. It is pertinent that Pakistan takes actions in accordance with its own national interests and not to further those of others. We are after all a sovereign nation and should jealously guard our sovereignty even if we have sacrifice for achieving it, we must not demur.

Auditing US aid
IN A bid to make its aid to Pakistan accountable, the Obama administration has reportedly decided to set up a separate auditing office in Islamabad to monitor financial assistance provided to Pakistan. The office will be tasked to monitor all assistance programs under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill, the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) and the Pakistan Counter-Insurgency Capability Fund (PCCF). The office will report to the Office of Inspector General in Washington and would employ two auditors, program analysts and the local staff recruited in Islamabad. The Obama administration has set up a similar office for Afghanistan as well and reportedly does so in other countries benefiting from U.S. largesse. However, The Daily Mail examines this development in light of Senator John Kerry, one of the co-sponsors of the bill and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s reservations. Last month he sent a letter to theUS State Department , saying that he feared the massive civilian aid flowing into Pakistan would be squandered or stolen. He argued that the high level of corruption in that country would make effective aid distribution a challenge. Senator John Kerry fears that a much larger portion of the fund could end up in accounts of the corrupt elite of Pakistan. In Senator Kerry’s seven-page letter to Richard Holbrooke, the Special US Representative for Pakistan andAfghanistan, Kerry expressed fear that the aid, 50 per cent of which would go directly to the Pakistan government or local partners, would be spent poorly. He wrote, in the letter, partly reported by the Boston Globe that “The potential for misuse is significant enough to raise warning flags about the pace of funnelling funds through institutions without a strong track record of transparent, accountable, and effective money management or significant experience in the successful delivery of projects.”
The Daily Mail finds that the seven-page letter is divided under various headlines such as ‘Leverage and Sustainability’, ‘Transparency’, ‘Accountability’, ‘Priorities’, ‘Visibility’ and ‘Public Diplomacy’. Kerry pointed out that the administration should be as transparent and specific as possible about how US funds will bespent in Pakistan. “To date, this process is still largely opaque to the broader public, including our Pakistani friends and partners. This lack of transparency can generate suspicion and distrust,” Kerry wrote under the heading-’Transparency’. He also suggested that the Pakistani civil society should be engaged in monitoring the use of funds, while expressing fears that themoney may not only be misused, but siphoned off by the ‘corrupt elite.’ “Channelling so much of the money through untested institutions so quickly could serve to confirm these suspicions,” the letter stated under the ‘Accountability’ heading. “This administration should be as transparent and specific as possible as how US funds will bespent in Pakistan. To date, this process is largely opaque to the broader public, including our Pakistani friends and partners.” The Daily Mail, while taking cognizance of the donor agency, in this case the US taxpayer’s concerns, believes that setting up a formal audit bureau in Pakistan, is adding insult to injury and looking a gift horse in the mouth. Indeed the U.S. government should look into the disbursement of the funds, if it feels inclined to do so, but that should be its internal matter. If Senator John Kerry is that concerned about the health and welfare of the people of Pakistan, he should make sure that the coalition support funds and Pakistan’s dues are disbursed timely; he should look into the prospects of recommending that the drone attacks, which have been challenged by humanitarian agencies in his own country should be terminated since they have caused more collateral damage than actually targeting hardened criminals, some of whom are “eliminated” only to conveniently come alive after a few weeks. Senator John Kerry, if he is a friend of the Pakistani people, should recommend to his government that they should let Pakistan be and tackle the war against terror in its own way, after all the Pakistanis will be left to suffer the consequences of the war once the US GIs depart for safer climes.

The Daily Mail - Daily News from Pakistan - Newspaper from Pakistan

 

[ramu]

You may have jumped into the thread without reading my first two posts on the subject. That is exactly what I said; that the US is objecting even though it will be unable to influence the outcome in this case and it will come out looking powerless in the process.

Am I to understand that you are predicting this transaction with China will not go through? Because if so, we can wait and see. I would bet against you, though.

Also, viz the China-Pak equation and whether anyone is dispensable, I understand that India has a big problem with China. I understand that China has exceeded India in every development and military metric, as well as on the World stage. I, consequently, understand that you would like to position China as a soulless giant crushing people left, right and center. Excuse us if we disregard this, though. I think paying much attention to the Indian point of view on what China thinks viz Pakistan is like hiring a hyena to advise you on the security of your flock of lambs.

No I have not ... I have read most of the posts and all of your posts on this thread.

Well, I am game for a bet. What are the stakes?

Forget India, it is not in this equation. Indian deal can be quoted to justify the current deal but for the current deal to go ahead just as Indian deal, China has to play the role of what US played in the NSG. So the comparison is between US and China and not India and China. So your argument on Indian point of view is uncalled for atleast in the current discussion. In NSG, Indian point of view is immaterial and so is Pakistan's with due respect.

What really matters is whether China has the clout to carry the deal forward. Much before that is whether China has the commitment to bring 40+ countries to OK a deal which the US is against. US alone influenced 90% of the countries to vote in favour of Indian waver. Russia is another key member. It will be interesting what Russia will do.

China in all possibility will not go against its international non proliferation commitments in glaring public view.

 

[TechLahore]

Ok then. The bet is on. What do you want the stakes to be? Perhaps we should settle this via PM so as not to invoke the ire of those against betting

 

[Jackdaws]

It is a deal between China and Pakistan. And nuke reactors are used to supply electricity which I bet is in shortage in Pakistan as it is in most of South Asia. Sure, it can be used to build materials which can be used in nukes but I would think India and Pakistan have enough nuclear weapons. China is atleast playing by the rules which is kinda nice of them. But I doubt the NSG will give a waiver - holier-than-thou countries like Australia, NZ - Austria - all of these will be difficult to convince. The Americans could barely convince them in India's case and both USA and India are in the good books of these countries. China and Pakistan - well - best of luck.

 

[foxbat]

Ok then. The bet is on. What do you want the stakes to be? Perhaps we should settle this via PM so as not to invoke the ire of those against betting

Oh No you dont.. No PM boss .. We can get a pool going if there are enough takers...

 

[Spring Onion]

Pakistan nuclear plants for peaceful use: China

Thursday, 17 Jun, 2010


BEIJING: China said on Thursday its civilian nuclear cooperation with Pakistan was for peaceful purposes, after the United States said it was seeking clarification from China on a deal to build two new reactors.

“I want to stress that the civilian nuclear cooperation between China and Pakistan is in line with each side's international obligations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news briefing in Beijing.

“It is for peaceful purposes, and is under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he added without elaborating.

US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters on Tuesday that Washington had asked China for more details on the deal.

“We have asked China to clarify the details of its sale of additional nuclear reactors to Pakistan. This appears to extend beyond cooperation that was grandfathered when China was approved for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” he said.

“We believe that such cooperation would require a specific exemption approved by consensus of the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” Crowley said.

The United States was expected to oppose the China-Pakistan deal next week at a meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The 46-nation group controls trade in “dual-use” nuclear fuel, materials and technology to ensure they are applied only to civilian nuclear energy programmes and not diverted into clandestine nuclear weapons work.

The Washington Post reported that China had suggested that the sale was grandfathered from before it joined the NSG in 2004, because it was completing work on two earlier reactors for Pakistan at the time.

Dawn.com

 

[ice_man]

China defends Pakistan nuclear cooperation as 'peaceful'

Updated at: 1400 PST, Thursday, June 17, 2010 ShareThis story

BEIJING: China on Thursday defended its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan as peaceful after the United States announced it had sought clarification from Beijing on the sale of two reactors to Islamabad.

"China and Pakistan have maintained cooperation in recent years in the civilian use of nuclear energy," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters when asked about the US reaction to the deal.

"This cooperation is in line with our respective international obligations and totally for peaceful purposes, and has International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and supervision."

The state-run China National Nuclear Corporation has agreed to finance two civilian nuclear reactors in Pakistan's Punjab province.

The deal comes after China in 2004 entered the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a group of nuclear energy states that forbids exports to nations lacking strict International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

On Tuesday, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters the United States had asked China to clarify details of the deal, which he said must be approved by the NSG.

China defends Pakistan nuclear cooperation as 'peaceful'

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Pakistan Outlines Nuclear Energy Goal, Cooperation With China​

June 17, 2010

A Pakistani Foreign Ministry official says his country hopes to generate substantial amounts of electricity from nuclear energy by 2030 based on existing cooperation with China, RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal reports.

Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told Radio Mashaal that any nuclear activities will be in line with international law and would be only for peaceful purposes.

"This cooperation between Pakistan and China is not new," he said. "And this deal is absolutely according to the IAEA's rules and safeguards."

According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear power is only a small part of total energy production in Pakistan, supplying 2.34 percent of the country's electricity.

Yet Basit was optimistic about the growth in Pakistan's nuclear energy sector.

"We have [already] been producing nuclear energy with the support of China. Our target is to have 8,800 megawatts of electricity from nuclear energy by 2030," he said. "We need this for our economic development."

The 8,800-megawatt goal comes as Pakistan faces a severe power crisis. The BBC, citing Pakistani government sources, says Pakistan currently faces an energy shortfall of 3,668 megawatts.

Pakistan has for several years sought a deal from the United States to provide nuclear technology for civilian energy production. The United States concluded such a deal with Pakistan's arch-rival, India, in 2006.

But Pakistan found China as an alternative. China has long been an important economic and military partner of Pakistan.

Despite Pakistan's attempts to reassure officials in Washington, the United States remains concerned by Pakistan's nuclear cooperation with China.

Pakistan Outlines Nuclear Energy Goal, Cooperation With China - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 2010

 

[Crypto]

China has said its civilian nuclear co-operation with Pakistan is peaceful.

A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said its plan to provide Pakistan with two new reactors was in line with international obligations.

Earlier this week, the United States expressed concern at the deal.

Fears over Pakistan's nuclear activities rose in 2004 after a top scientist admitted leaking nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

Relations between Pakistan and its neighbour India are also of continuing concern. Both are nuclear-armed.

'Supervision'
China's foreign ministry spokesman said: "I want to stress that the civilian nuclear co-operation between China and Pakistan is in line with each side's international obligations.

"It is for peaceful purposes, and is under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency," he told a news briefing in Beijing.

On Tuesday the US state department said it had asked China to clarify the details of its sale of additional nuclear reactors to Pakistan.

"This appears to extend beyond co-operation that was grandfathered when China was approved for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group," it said.

The 46-nation group regulates trade in "dual-use" nuclear fuel and technology to ensure material meant for civilian energy use is not diverted into clandestine nuclear weapons programmes.

The United States is a key ally of Pakistan. It has its own civilian nuclear co-operation accord with Pakistan's rival, India.

Pakistan would like a similar deal with the US, reports say, but continued fears over its proliferation record remain a major stumbling block.

In May 2009 Pakistan denied it was expanding its nuclear arsenal after the US said it had unearthed new evidence that it had done so.

Pakistan built its first nuclear power station in 1972 in Karachi with the help of Canadian experts.

But Western countries, lobbied by the US, later halted co-operation amid fears that Pakistan was secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Pakistan currently has three nuclear reactors, one for military use. The two to be built by China will take its number of civilian reactors to four, the BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Karachi says.

BBC News - China says Pakistan nuclear deal 'peaceful'

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I'm posting excerpts from a pretty detailed article from the the Carnegie Endowment for Peace on the NSG, what it is and what its guidelines entail, and some of the issues it will be taking up in the coming meeting.

The excerpt from the article relates to the Chinese NPP sale to Pakistan, but I would reccomend reading the entire article to get an understanding of the NSG for those who are not very familiar.

China wants to export reactors to Pakistan. Is this a violation of NSG guidelines? Will this issue be on the agenda for the NSG meeting?

This is not on the agenda. But China, which joined the NSG in 2004, is now expected to make a statement about the matter in New Zealand. China might disclose its intentions during the plenary meeting on the last two days, when NSG members plan to discuss their activities with non-NPT countries.

If China aims to export the reactors, Beijing has three options: to follow the example of the U.S.–India deal and formally request an exemption from the NSG guidelines for its trade with Pakistan; to claim that the export of the reactors is “grandfathered” by a pre-2004 Sino-Pakistan nuclear cooperation agreement; or to exercise its sovereign right and ignore the guidelines, which are voluntary and non-binding. According to diplomats, as of mid-June, Beijing had not yet decided which of the three options it would choose.

China might argue that the exports could be justified by the need for regional balance in South Asia in the aftermath of the NSG’s lifting of sanctions against India. But some in Beijing may instead assert that the commerce was grandfathered by the bilateral pact with Pakistan, thereby obviating any political justification by China for making an exception to the NSG rules.

However, when China joined the NSG it told the group that the Sino-Pakistan nuclear cooperation agreement permitted China to export the Chashma-2 reactor to Pakistan, small research reactors, and the fuel for these units. On the basis of previous Chinese statements, the United States will come to the meeting in New Zealand understanding that the supply of additional power reactors would not be grandfathered.

The United States is not in favor of such a deal, but because Washington pressed the NSG—and China—to exempt India from NSG trade sanctions in 2008, it is now more difficult to complain about China’s desire to export reactors to Pakistan.


Will we see resolution on the China-Pakistan deal in New Zealand?

If China spells out that it intends to export the reactors, it will then be up to the NSG’s members to decide whether they will accept this, and if so, on what terms. A quick decision appears unlikely as NSG members on the eve of the meeting did not agree on how the body should respond.

This week, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department told reporters that China should request a formal exemption from the guidelines to export the reactors. Some other NSG states, however, disagree and fear that this route could lead to a protracted debate over whether the NSG should dilute the guidelines to accommodate China. A request for an exemption by China could also expose individual NSG states to pressure from China to get the exemption and if China failed, it could threaten to leave the NSG.

In the aftermath of the U.S.–India deal and the group’s decision to accommodate it, the NSG will have to perform a delicate balancing act to find the least unsatisfactory solution to China’s challenge. In the view of some NSG states, an agreement permitting China to grandfather the exports under the 2004 nuclear cooperation agreement with Pakistan would be the least damaging outcome, but it may not be credible. If China seeks an exemption, NSG countries could urge Beijing to provide nuclear security and non-proliferation benefits in exchange for limited commerce with Pakistan.

But NSG members must weigh the risks carefully. Pushing Beijing out of the NSG would be dangerous given China’s fast-growing share of global nuclear trade. Beijing may ignore objections of other NSG states and it might even react to a rebuke by threatening to leave the NSG. NSG states, however, have leverage over China in nuclear matters as Beijing knows that it needs to import uranium from Australia, Canada, and Kazakhstan to keep expanding its nuclear power program. It also needs support from vendors in France, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States to keep building and exporting reactors.

China, Pakistan, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

 

[Nahraf]

US objects to Pakistan-China nuclear deal and also objects to Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline deal. Pakistan is signing these deals to secure its energy needs while US has nothing to offer. I think both this deal must go through since they are Pakistan's best interests.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Nuclear powers set for Pakistan showdown

By Jonathan Marcus
BBC Diplomatic Correspondent

A row is looming between Beijing and Washington over China's proposed sale of two nuclear power-generating reactors to Pakistan.

This would appear to break the guidelines set by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a gathering of countries who export civil nuclear technology.

The NSG's annual meeting is taking place in Christchurch, New Zealand all this week and it provides the first opportunity for other governments to explore what exactly China is proposing.

"During recent weeks Beijing has come under growing pressure," says the veteran nuclear expert Mark Hibbs, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"And what I expect to happen is that the Chinese will make some kind of statement to clarify their intentions."

Mr Hibbs does not expect any fireworks yet, not least because there is no agreement within the NSG over how to proceed.

But the diplomatic battle lines are already being drawn with many countries eager to avoid the bruising exchanges of just a few years ago when, in 2008, the US - backed by a number of other major powers - pushed through a special exemption at the NSG allowing it to sell civil nuclear technology to India.

This exemption - despite the fact that India has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has an active nuclear weapons programme - was strongly condemned by many arms control advocates.

It has already prompted charges of double-standards.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for one, has claimed that his country is being denied nuclear technology even though it has no nuclear weapons, while a special deal was cut for a friend of Washington - India - which already had the bomb.

Mark Fitzpatrick, the chief proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said he remained of the view that the US-India deal set "a dangerous precedent.

"It strengthened the sense of double standards," he argues.

Even Mark Hibbs, who believes that the US-India deal had "a deep strategic rationale" says "the problem was the way in which Washington set about it."

The administration of former President George W Bush, he argues, simply "ignored the proliferation concerns". Washington should have been much tougher in extracting concessions from India, Mr Hibbs says.
Beijing's choice

Now the India exemption hangs like a shadow over the deliberations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. It cannot come to any view until China makes its hand known.

So what will Beijing do? Mark Hibbs believes that China really has three options.

* Follow the US-India example and seek a special exemption for the Pakistan sale.

* Try to claim that the two additional reactors were in some way part of an original deal under which it has already supplied two reactors to Pakistan. This was in the works before China joined the NSG in 2004.
* Simply ignore the guidelines and go ahead with the sale anyway.

Seeking an exemption, which appears to be the route that the Obama administration wants China to pursue, could throw the whole organisation into chaos.

Seeking so-called "grandfather rights" to include the new deal in the previous contract might be preferable. But, inconveniently, Mark Hibbs believes that there is a paper trail suggesting that China had no intention to make further reactor sales to Pakistan when it originally joined the NSG.

Ignoring the guidelines altogether would set a dangerous precedent.

China plans to become a big player in the civil nuclear industry. It has a huge domestic nuclear power programme and it has ambitious plans for major sales abroad.

China's whole emergence onto the world stage has been conditioned by a desire to play by the established international rules. Overturning the NSG guidelines would undermine the whole cause of nuclear non-proliferation.

Geopolitical implications

A crucial element will be how the Obama administration chooses to play this issue.

"Up to a few days ago I thought that the US and China had cut a deal to allow Beijing to go ahead. But now the US is raising questions", Mark Fitzgerald says.

Some analysts wonder if the US, like many members of the NSG, might simply prefer the whole issue to go away. But that clearly isn't going to happen.

There could well be strong pressure from Capitol Hill for President Obama to oppose any sale of reactors to Pakistan.

The country - like India - has never signed the NPT. It too has a small nuclear arsenal. And, more worryingly, proliferation experts say it has a terrible record of selling nuclear technology and knowhow to third countries.

A further complication lies ahead.

If both India and Pakistan were to gain exemptions, then Israel too (in exactly the same position: outside the NPT and believed to have a significant nuclear arsenal) would come looking for a deal on civil nuclear technology.

That would present the Obama administration with a huge dilemma with major repercussions throughout the Middle East.

The proposed China-Pakistan nuclear deal may well be a diplomatic problem that fizzles for a while rather than exploding immediately into life.

But it has huge implications that go way beyond just the relationship between India and Pakistan and the already somewhat strained ties between Washington and Beijing.

BBC News - Nuclear powers set for Pakistan showdown

 

[mjnaushad]

^^^^ ITS A SPAM....ALL REPORT IT.

 

[SpArK]

US, China on collision course over helping Pak build nuke reactors​

WASHINGTON: The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting in New Zealand starting on Monday is likely to witness the US and China locking horns over the later's decision to help Pakistan set up two nuclear power plants.

The US has already voiced its concerns over Beijing's decision to provide technical and logistic support to Islamabad over the planned 650-megawatt reactors in Punjab's Chasma region, and is likely to try and forge a consensus on updating the rules designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration fears that Pakistan, which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) yet, would divert some technology to its nuclear weapons programme or to another country, especially when the country has a history of nuclear proliferation.

It is pertinent to mention here that in 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is considered as the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme had confessed to selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

However, China and Pakistan maintain that the US had itself sealed a similar deal to sell nuclear fuel and technology to India in 2006 even though New Delhi had not signed the NPT, The Times reports.

Experts also believe that it would difficult for the White House to forge a consensus against China's deal with Pakistan, mainly because of its civil nuclear deal with India.

"Because Washington pressed the NSG and China to exempt India from NSG trade sanctions, it is now more difficult to complain about China's desire to export reactors to Pakistan," Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said.