POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: New Pakistan-U.S. Ties Could Worsen Arms Race

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 27 2004 (IPS) - While the United States is portraying its new relationship with Pakistan as one focused on its ‘war against terrorism’, analysts in India fear that this could end up stoking the arms race in South Asia.

For instance, the accordance of ‘major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) ally’ status to Pakistan, announced by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Islamabad on Mar. 18 came as a bombshell for India’s external affairs establishment.

After all, Powell had visited India immediately before he flew to neighbouring Pakistan, but gave no inkling as to what he had in mind for the rival neighbour.

Subsequent declarations by Washington that it is prepared to grant India similar status only worsened suspicions. In a briefing Tuesday, India’s foreign ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna, was emphatic that this country had ”not given any consideration to that kind of relationship with the U.S”.

Pakistan’s new status has already led to several benefits for it.

On Wednesday, U.S. President George W Bush ordered the lifting of sanctions imposed on Pakistan soon after Musharraf led a military coup in October 1999 against the elected government of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

This cleared the decks for the resumption of arms sales to Pakistan, including a long-pending deal to sell it F-16 fighters.

Testifying Thursday before the Senate appropriations committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice, state and judiciary, Powell said the U.S. government is ready to supply Pakistan with advanced equipment to fight remnants of the al-Qaeda holed up in the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas.

”They need more helicopter capacity in that part of the tribal areas,” Powell was quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI) agency as saying. Powell also indicated that Washington is now ready to supply to Pakistan with F-16 fighters, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, according to the PTI report.

According to Prof. C Raja Mohan, who teaches international relations at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India would be keen to limit U.S. arms sales to Pakistan and ensure that strong ties with Washington would not lead to a revival of cross-border infiltration into Indian-controlled Kashmir by militants based on the Pakistan-controlled part of the divided territory.

”India has every reason to argue in Washington that while it is prepared to live with a modest military modernisation of Pakistan, it will not accept arms transfers that threaten its security,” Raja Mohan said.

For its part, India is already on an arms buying spree. It has just acquired an aircraft carrier from Russia, inked a long-pending deal to buy advanced jet trainers from the Britain and acquiring airborne early warning (AEW) systems from Israel.

New Delhi’s consternation over Pakistan’s non-NATO ally status proceeds first from the fact that it did not expect an elevation for Pakistan so soon after the revelations in February that nuclear technology had been leaked by its nuclear establishment to Libya, Iran and North Korea countries – which Washington considers part of the ‘axis of evil’.

Second, it followed a suggestion by Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Mar. 14, while making a video address to an eminent persons’ conclave in New Delhi, that Kashmir remains a core issue and that unless it is addressed in the recently resumed dialogue between the two countries, ”everything will slide back to square one”.

Musharraf, when he as Pakistan’s army chief, is said to have masterminded the incursions at Kargil on the Line of Control (LoC) in divided Kashmir. This led to an undeclared war between the two countries in 1999, a year after both countries declared themselves nuclear powers.

India and Pakistan are scheduled to hold the next round of diplomatic dialogue in May or June as part of a series of confidence-building measures begun soon after Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Musharraf pledged to work toward building peace during a regional summit in Islamabad in January.

Since then, the two nuclear-armed rivals have been attempting to build peace through increasing business and sporting ties and by increasing travel facilities for citizens overland and by air.

”Powell’s announcement might just harden the stance of the Pakistani military establishment to put an agreement (on Kashmir) out of reach,” said Prem Shankar Jha, one of India’s most respected commentators on public affairs.

Given its status of a major non-NATO ally, Pakistan is now clubbed with a group of close U.S. allies that in the Asia-Pacific region includes Japan, Australia, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, New Zealand and the Philippines.

All these countries may stockpile U.S. military hardware and benefit from loans to finance arms deals.

In effect, this means that except for nuclear bombs and missiles, Pakistan can buy almost anything that the U.S. military uses and at the same prices, Indian analysts say. ”Pakistan will get more bang for the buck than Indian can hope to,” commented Jha.

Massive arms transfers and aid to Pakistan by the Washington during a covert war to build up the Taliban and expel the former Soviet Union from Afghanistan ended up being used for what many here call a ‘proxy war’against India in Kashmir.

The South Waziristan tribal agency in an area of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, where the Pakistan army is now battling al-Qaeda on Washington’s bidding, also happens to border Kashmir on the east. (END/IPS/AP/IP/RDR/JS/04)