SOUTH ASIA: China Behind Pakistan’s Missile Tests, Says India

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 6 2002 (IPS) - Pakistan’s test Friday of its nuclear-capable and medium-range ballistic missile, the ‘Shaheen’, has once again prompted India to level accusations of missile technology proliferation to that country by China.

India’s official reaction, made by foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao, was: ”As we have said before, we are not particularly impressed with these missile antics of Pakistan. It is well known that Pakistan’s missiles are based on clandestinely imported material, equipment and technology.”

Within hours after the Pakistani test, India test-fired a short-range surface-to-air missile ‘Akash’ (called India’s Patriot missile), which can carry a 55 kg warhead over 25 km and can take on several targets in the sky simultaneously.

The Akash is one of several missiles being developed by India’s indigenous Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), which was set up in 1983 and whose main architect, A P J Abdul Kalam. is now president of India – a largely titular but constitutionally important job

Rao did not mention any particular country and her reaction was directed mostly at statements by her counterpart in Islamabad, Aziz Khan, who described the Shaheen as an ”indigenously produced” missile and the test itself as ”routine”.

But on Saturday, India’s outspoken Defence Minister George Fernandes, long a critic of China, said Pakistan’s military has depended on support from China ever since it was carved out as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims in 1947 following decolonisation of the larger British India

‘Everyone knows what Pakistan will be without China. Its ego is boosted purely by the support it gets from China,” Fernandes said at a convention of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the western port city of Mumbai

When India weaponised its nuclear capability through a series of tests in May 1998, Fernandes had said they were aimed at countering China’s capability rather than Pakistan’s, drawing protests from Beijing. ”China is the mother of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb,” he then said.

India fought a bloody border with China in 1962 and although relations between the Asian giants have been on the mend, Beijing’s close friendship with Islamabad has remained a sore point.

On Saturday, Fernandes said that Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme was exposed by the fact that it responded to India’s tests within a matter of days with a series of its own.

The last occasion when India officially referred to Pakistan’s ”clandestinely acquired” missile technology was in May when Pakistan test-fired its medium range ‘Ghauri’ and the short-range ‘Ghaznavi’ missiles at the height of military confrontation along the Indo-Pakistan border

That confrontation was defused through intense international diplomacy led by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. But India has continued to maintain 700,000 troops along the international border and the Line of Control (LoC) that runs through disputed Kashmir state, where staggered state assembly elections are underway

India’s dim view of Pakistan’s missile technology was endorsed on Friday by Russia’s official news agency Itar-Tass, which quoted a ”top expert” who said Islamabad was ”trying to convince the whole world that the ‘Ghauri’ and ‘Shaheen’ are exceptionally indigenously developed missiles but are carbon copies of their North Korean and Chinese equivalents”.

The unnamed expert commented that Pakistan’s latest test was evidence that South Asia remained the most nuclear-conflict prone region in the world and speculated that Islamabad could now be working on an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).

During the Cold War years, Moscow was aligned with India militarily and has continued to be India’s main supplier of military hardware although New Delhi has been aggressively pursuing a pro-Washington line in recent times.

India has enthusiastically supported Washington’s missile defence system and even offered its strength in computer software and satellite technology in return for being given protection under a nuclear-missile umbrella

After India’s launch of the ‘Akash’, Pakistan’s Information Minister Nisar Memon accused India of initiating an arms race and insisted that the launch of the Shaheen did not have that intention

The United States and Britain, the two countries most active in shuttle diplomacy between Islamabad and New Delhi in May and June that headed off an all-out, possible nuclear exchange, have both expressed disappointment at the tests.

”We’re disappointed that ballistic missile tests are occurring in the region,” U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was reported saying in Washington Friday. ”There is a charged atmosphere in the region and these tests can contribute to that atmosphere, and make it harder to prevent a costly and destabilising nuclear and missile arms race.”

Boucher was referring to the military standoff on the border between the two countries that has been continuing since India blamed Pakistan for the attempt by a ‘jihadist’ squad to blow up India’s national parliament on Dec. 13 last year.

Despite international pressure, India has refused to pull back its troops from the border until after the elections in Kashmir are over on Oct. 8 or beyond that if necessary.

India accuses Pakistan of trying to grab Kashmir through a ”proxy war” waged through militant groups and has blamed Islamabad for a series of murderous attacks on candidates and other participants in the elections, the first phase of which began on Sep 16.

Pakistan’s President Gen Pervez Musharraf has denied supporting militant groups based in his territory but has declared the elections illegal, designed to perpetuate India’s hold over the Muslim-majority state and possibly rigged.

Fernandes defended the elections in Kashmir as free and fair. ”The elections are a way of proving that using bullets is not the only way of fighting terrorism,” he said.

In a report released Thursday, the U.S.-based International Crisis Group (ICG) blamed successive military governments in Pakistan for continuing tensions with India and said that Musharraf’s plans to perpetuate military power in Pakistan, even after the Oct. 10 poll there, could lead to instability in the region

”A military government in Pakistan has already exacerbated tensions with India over Kashmir and elements of the military have used ‘jihadis’ for their own purposes,” the ICG report said

SOUTH ASIA: China Behind Pakistan’s Missile Tests, Says India

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 6 2002 (IPS) - Pakistan’s test Friday of its nuclear-capable and medium-range ballistic missile, the ‘Shaheen’, has once again prompted India to level accusations of missile technology proliferation to that country by China.
(more…)