SOUTH ASIA: Missile Tests Raise Pakistan-North Korea Link

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 27 2002 (IPS) - Pakistan’s missile tests over the weekend have provided India with another opportunity to harp on its neighbour’s “clandestine” acquisition of nuclear and missile technology from North Korea.

After Pakistan carried out tests of its medium-range, nuclear-capable, Ghauri and the short-range Ghaznavi ballistic missiles, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nirupama Rao said on Sunday that India was “not impressed by these missile antics, particularly when all that is demonstrated is borrowed or imported ability”.

He emphasised that the technology used in the missiles was “clandestinely acquired from other countries, a fact that has been unearthed by India and extensively documented in research-findings by well-established research institutions and laboratories all over the world”.

Defying international calls for restraint amid heightened tension at the border, Pakistan went ahead with missile tests on Saturday and Sunday, which political analysts say were aimed at impressing a domestic audience.

The nuclear-armed neighbours have between them massed more than a million troops on their border, along with missile carriers, tanks and artillery.

In June 1999, following a tip off, Indian customs at the port of Kandla in western Gujarat state seized the North Korean vessel, Ku Wol San bound for the Pakistan port of Karachi and impounded its cargo which consisted largely of missile components and production materials for the Nodong missile on which the Ghauri is based.

Curiously, the seizure came four months after the U.S. House of Representatives was told by veteran expert on strategic affars, Richard Armitage that the best way to tackle North Korean missile exports was by interdicting them on the high seas since diplomacy had failed to contain proliferation by Pyongyang.

Armitage, appointed U.S. Deputy Secretary of State by the new Bush administration , is set to visit the sub-continent early next month as part of international efforts to defuse a military standoff between India and Pakistan along their 1,800 km border.

The 1999 seizure at the Kandla port led many to believe that Pakistan had entered into a deal with North Korea to barter its nuclear technology, miniaturised for use in nuclear missile warheads, in exchange for missile technology developed by Pyongyang.

Commenting on the alleged barter deal, the South Korean newspaper ‘Chungang Ilbo’ then quoted a defence ministry official who said North Korea was bent on obtaining materials on miniaturised nuclear warhead technology from Pakistan, which tested these devices in 1998.

When Pakistan first test-fired the Ghauri in April 1998, it became apparent to most experts that the missile with a range of 1,500 kms and capable of carrying a 700 kilogram nuclear warhead was a clone of the North Korean, Nodong missile.

According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), dedicated to ending the global arms race, the Ghauri missile “appears to be a derivative of the North Korean Nodong design” and “represents both an opportunity to use heavier uranium bombs on ballistic missiles, as well as to deliver nuclear warheads to targets across much of India”.

India, which first tested a ‘peaceful’ nuclear device as early as 1974 responded to the testing of the Ghauri by ‘weaponising’ its capability and demonstrating it with a series of miniaturised blasts including those for ‘battlefield’ warheads the following month.

But India’s tests only triggered off a series of retaliatory nuclear tests within days by Pakistan. Relations between the two countries, which have a half-century-old dispute over the possession of Kashmir, steadily worsened and erupted into an undeclared but bloody border in 1999 which nearly led to a nuclear exchange.

The international community responded to the tit-for-tat tests by slapping sanctions and a weapons embargo on both countries but these were lifted after the Sep. 11 attacks on the U.S. in return for support, particularly from Pakistan for the ‘war against terror’ against the jihadist ‘Al Qaeda’ network based in Afghanistan.

North Korean involvement in Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programme became known through the mysterious June 1998 murder in Islamabad of Kim Sin-ae, wife of Kang Thae-yun, a key figure in the missiles-for-nuclear-technology deal between Islamabad and Pyongyang.

Newspapers cited diplomatic sources as saying that Kim was killed by North Korean agents working at Pakistan’s Khan Research Laboratories on suspicion of having provided details of the strategic weapons deals to western intelligence agencies.

Pakistan has never acknowledged the North Korean link and says that its nuclear and missile technolgies are completely indigenous. Leading Indian strategic analysts believe that the Pyongyang-Islamabad link has the blessings of China and that both have been working as “proxies” for Beijing’s interests in the region.

“Given the primitive technological infrastructure in both countries, only the credulous would believe that both these countries developed their offensive capabilities indigenously or that it is purely accidental that North Korea is the principal tormentor of Japan and Pakistan of India, the other giant of Asia besides China,” wrote M.D. Nalapat in an article for the Washington-based Centre for Security Policy last April.

India’s outspoken Defence Minister, George Fernandes had publicly said that India’s main concern is China rather than Pakistan and that Beijing is really the “mother of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb”.

Not surprisingly, India enthusiastically supported Washington’s missile defence system and even offered its strengths in computer software and satellite technology in return for being allowed to enlist in any international system that might afford protection against a nuclear missile attack.

India’s strategy may be paying off because in spite of aggressively moving 700,000 troops and armour to the Pakistan border in December, jeopardising the ‘war against terror’ in Afghanistan, Washington came through with the sale to New Delhi in April of weapons-locating radar systems over loud protests from Islamabad.

Earlier this month, U.S. troops conducted joint-exercises with the Indian army aimed at building a capability for coordinated airborne operations.

Washington, which long banned export of space and missile technology to India under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) has now offered support for India’s space programme, which is closely linked to its ambitious plan to develop inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

India’s own indigenously developed space programme has progressed to a point where it exports remote sensing data from a galaxy of satellites it has launched and has also commercially launched satellites for countries like Germany and South Korea on its rockets.

Asked about Islamabad’s open violation of the MTCR, foreign ministry spokesperson Rao said: “The actions of Pakistan fit into the international community’s nightmarish scenario of state-sponsored terrorist activities armed with ballistic technology and nuclear weaponry.”