The comparison to Argentine and Brazil is inaccurate, India is not about to give up nukes with China right nextdoor.
Major powers want S Asia nuclear free zone
By Zia Iqbal Shahid
BRUSSELS: As Pakistan and India are set to exchange next week lists of nuclear installations and facilities, members of the international nuclear club want them to create a South Asian nuclear free zone.
The major powers want Pakistan and India to sign a bilateral pact on the lines of ‘Treaty of
Tlatelolco’ which two nuclear rivals in South America - Argentine and Brazil - concluded in 1990s to declare the region a weapons free zone, a source told The News.
The official acknowledgement that some top nuclear scientists including Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan are under investigation about reports of possible individual links with Iran and Libya, according to a diplomatic source, has tarnished Pakistani claim on non-proliferation.
A new thinking in the policymakers of the major powers is suggesting that the "deleterious trend" of nuclear technology getting into what they describe as "irresponsible hands" could only be capped by early creation of South Asian weapons free zone.
Major world powers, however, have applauded the commitment of India and Pakistan towards exchanging lists of their nuclear installation on yearly basis.
Encouraged by the consistency to the ‘Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities between India and Pakistan’, two of the five veto wielders in the UN Security Council, the source revealed, have planned to ask India and Pakistan to consider option of an agreement to declare South Asia a nuclear free zone.
Pakistan and India have officially indicated to the diplomats from the permanent members of the Security Council that they plan to exchange lists of their nuclear installations and facilities on January 1, 2004.
Pakistan and India signed the pact on not attacking nuclear facilities December 31, 1988, and entered into force on January 27, 1991. The Pakistani list, last year, reportedly contained six installations while India in the past had listed 11 of its nuclear installations.
"The exchange of the lists through diplomatic channels, and simultaneously at New Delhi and Islamabad for 13th consecutive year is a good initiative, but time has come that both India and Pakistan should think of taking a step forward aimed at denuclearising South Asia," a Western diplomat said, adding, "A bilateral agreement on the paradigm of ‘Treaty of Tlatelolco’ may help the region if both the countries have will to denuclearise".
The diplomat said, "Rivalry between Argentina and Brazil led them to embark on nuclear weapons programs in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, however, they concluded a series of treaties that bound them to end their nuclear weapons’ development and to seek greater cooperation and transparency in their nuclear programs".
The source said senior American and British intelligence officials had been discussing various options to denuclearise South Asia with Pakistani authorities. Pakistan has indicated its preparedness if India is willing to do so.
After Tripoli’s pledge to give up Libya’s unconventional weapons programme, the major world powers intend to concentrate on South Asia pressing India and Pakistan to follow the example by initiating a process which could culminate in dismantling both the country’s ‘nuclear, chemical and missile programmes’," the source claimed.
The expectations of major powers will be conveyed to India and Pakistan after they receive official confirmation of exchange of lists of nuclear installations and facilities. The agreement was aimed at preventing the two sides from attacking the nuclear installations during war.
"What worked for the two nuclear rivals in South America in 1990s can also be effective for India and Pakistan, now", the diplomat opined.
The ‘Treaty of Tlatelolco’ was signed by two ultra nationalist presidents, Carlos Menem in Argentina and Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil. The need to balance power of the military with the civilian government and large foreign debts were used as tools to pressurize the presidents of Argentine and Brazil.
The major world powers, according to the diplomatic source, want India and Pakistan to establish an institution similar to ‘Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials’, which was created in South America in 1991. The institution produced such circumstance in South America that Brazil, in 1994, ratified the ‘Treaty of Tlatelolco’, which created the Latin American nuclear weapons free zone, and in 1997 ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Argentina ratified the Treaty of Tlatelolco in 1994 and the NPT in 1995. The real motive behind the fresh expectations of the major world powers, according to the source, is to "coax India and Pakistan to ultimately sign the NPT and full-scope nuclear safeguards agreements with the IAEA".
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/dec20...main/main6.htm
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Originally Posted by Murad
