POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Nuclear Threat on Subcontinent Recedes

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jan 6 2004 (IPS) - The spectre of a nuclear holocaust, which has loomed over the subcontinent ever since India and Pakistan conducted tit-for-that nuclear tests in 1998, has finally begun to recede as they agree to resolve their longstanding differences through a ‘composite dialogue’ to begin in February. The breakthrough, after five years of failed attempts at dialogue punctuated by a border war in 1999 and a military standoff in 2001, came on Tuesday at the close of the two-day summit of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Islamabad.

”The two leaders agreed that constructive dialogue would promote progress towards the common objectives of peace, security and economic development for our peoples and for future generations,” according to a joint statement at the end of the conference.

”It is always better that relations between the two countries improve since that would make the danger from the nuclear weapons they possess less likely,” said Achin Vanaik nuclear specialist and co-founder of the influential Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND) and the group, South Asians Against Nukes.

In an interview with IPS, Vanaik said the truly important outcome of the SAARC summit was the agreement on the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA), which would ensure that the nuclear-armed neighbours were ”locked into a new collective arrangement” that included Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Vanaik said he was inclined to give the new accord ”cautious welcome” and expected no ”dramatic transformation” given ”the whole history of oscillation” when it came to war and peace between Pakistan and India, which were divided on religious grounds in 1947.

That partition did not include the territory of Kashmir – and the two countries have since gone to war at least thrice in attempts to settle the issue of militarily.

The just-finished summit saw Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf meeting, for the first time in nearly three years, at the sidelines of the summit.

The two officials had previous meetings, but they were failures. Vajpayee travelled to Pakistan in 1999 and Musharraf arrived in the Indian city of Agra in 2001. India insisted that any discussion of the Kashmir issue must be preceded by a ”cessation of cross-border terrorism” carried out by militant groups located in the Pakistan-held part of divided Kashmir.

Significantly, Tuesday’s joint statement said: ”President Musharraf reassured Prime Minister Vajpayee that he will not permit any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used to support terrorism in any manner. President Musharraf emphasised that a sustained and productive dialogue addressing all issues would lead to positive results.”

Musharraf has in the past insisted that the 1999 war on the Line of Control (LoC) at Kargil was carried out by indigenous freedom fighters seeking to liberate Kashmir. But the hostilities rapidly escalated and involved the downing of each other’s aircraft and the loss of thousands of lives before it was stopped by the intervention of then U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Officials said thatClinton, who afterwards described the region as ”the most dangerous place in the world”, had reason to believe that the Pakistan army was preparing to resort to nuclear weapons and there were indications that India would respond in like fashion.

The years that followed saw the leaders of both countries publicly threatening to use their nuclear weapons on each other, even as despairing analysts pointed to how neither had effective command and control systems. In any case, they said, it would take less than three minutes to deliver a nuclear bomb on one of several key cities on the other side of the border.

Following an attempt by a suicide squad to blow up the Indian Parliament in December 2001, India withdrew its high commissioner from Islamabad, suspended overflights by Pakistani aircraft and massed some 700,000 troops on the border. New Delhi also said it was ready to act against training camps in Pakistan-held territory, disregarding the nuclear threat.

It took intense international ‘shuttle-diplomacy’ between New Delhi and Islamabad, led by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, to defuse a situation dangerous enough for several countries to carry out emergency evacuations of its nationals from the two countries.

Since then, Pakistan has been under pressure from United States – its ally in the post-Sep. 11, 2001 ‘war on terrorism’ in Afghanistan – to dismantle the militant camps that India insists exist along the Line of Control.

At a press conference where he released the joint statement Tuesday, Musharraf denied that any western power had influenced the resumption of a peace dialogue with India. ”There is no question of any outside force… the deal is between India and Pakistan.”

Curiously though, Pakistan has been forced in recent weeks by U.S. investigators to concede that its top nuclear scientists may have been involved in the illegal transfer of nuclear weapons technology to other countries, including those Washington regards as ”rogue nations.”

Among the countries that may have received such technology are Iran, Libya and North Korea – nations declared in 2002 by U.S. President George W Bush as forming the ”axis of evil” along with Cuba, Syria and Iraq.

”As investigators unravel the mysteries of the North Korean, Iranian and now the Libyan nuclear projects, Pakistan – and those it empowered with knowledge and technology they are now selling on their own – has emerged as the intellectual and trading hub of a loose network of hidden nuclear proliferators,” the ‘New York Times’ reported on Jan. 4.