Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Pakistan warns US of Asia arms race

Pakistan warns US of Asia arms race
By Jo Johnson in New Delhi and Edward Luce in Washington 
 
Pakistan on Thursday night warned that the groundbreaking civil nuclear
co-operation agreement between the US and India risked triggering an arms
race in south Asia, in a statement likely to inflame already tense
relations with Washington. 
The country’s National Command Authority – a committee of top generals,
government officials and nuclear scientists chaired by President Pervez
Musharraf – warned that the deal would upset the strategic balance in the
region. 
The statement said that the US-India deal would have “implications on
strategic stability” because it would “enable India to produce significant
quantities of fissile material and nuclear weapons from unsafeguarded
nuclear reactors”. 
“Strategic stability in south Asia and the global non-proliferation regime
would have been better served if the US had considered a package approach
for Pakistan and India . . . with a view to preventing a nuclear arms race
in the region,” it added.
US officials say Islamabad’s objections are based on a fundamental
misreading of last week’s deal, which places India’s nuclear reprocessing
facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. US
officials are also careful to distinguish between the nuclear
non-proliferation record of India, which they consider to be good, and
Pakistan, which is seen as one of the worst proliferators.
“We are not anticipating in any way, shape or form a similar deal for any
other country,” Nick Burns, the US undersecretary of state, who led the US
negotiations with India, said after the deal was announced last Friday.
“Obviously Pakistan has a past in terms of nuclear proliferation which,
with the AQ Khan network, was very troubling. India has a very different
past.”
The US remains concerned over the extent of the operation overseen by
Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s one-time chief nuclear scientist, who in
2004 publicly admitted that he had traded nuclear technology with Iran,
Libya and North Korea.
Pakistan has consistently objected to being excluded from the special deal
that Washington is offering India, but never warned so starkly of a
renewed arms race between the two nuclear powers, who have fought three
wars since 1947. 
The deal promises to end more than three decades of isolation for the
Indian nuclear programme, notwithstanding New Delhi’s longstanding refusal
to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). 
The US has refused to extend the same nuclear co-operation to Pakistan. US
President George W. Bush said during his visit to south Asia in March 2006
that the two countries had “different needs and different histories”.
Both India and Pakistan developed their nuclear weapons as non-signatories
to the NPT, which recognised as nuclear weapons states only the five
countries that had detonated devices before 1967. 
Washington is seeking to persuade the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the
44-country body that regulates trade in nuclear commerce, to make an
exception to the NPT by allowing the sale of fissile fuel and technology
to India under IAEA safeguards.
Pakistan argues that India will be free to allocate more of its scarce
indigenous fissile fuel to its strategic weapons programme once the
majority of its civilian or electricity-producing nuclear reactors are
able to import uranium from overseas.
Analysts expect the burgeoning Indo-US relationship to push Pakistan into
seeking even closer ties with China. Khurshid Kasuri, foreign minister,
told the FT following Mr Bush’s visit that Pakistanis regarded China as a
more reliable ally than the US.
Experts believe Pakistan will seek assistance from China, which has
already helped with the development of the nuclear facility at Chashma in
the Pakistani province of Punjab.
 da The Financial Times  
-- 
questo articolo e` stato inviato via web dal servizio gratuito 
http://www.newsland.it/news
 segnala gli abusi ad 
ab...@newsland.it

*.sergio.* :

دارفور بين التجاذبات الإقليمية والمصالح الدولية
النزاع في دارفور -مع أنه حديث العهد- اكتسب بعدا دوليا وإقليميا لم تبلغه حرب
جنوب السودان لأكثر من عشرين عاما، وقد كان لهذا الوضع أثره في أن تصبح دارفور
هي قضية التجاذبات من الدرجة الأولى بصورة
-- 
R.