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Pakistan Says New Reactor Will Not Spark Arms Race
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said Friday that construction of a large heavy-water nuclear reactor would not cause an arms race with neighboring India, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, July 28). “It’s nothing new, the world knows about it, the world knows that it’s safe in our hands,” Kasuri said. “It’s five years old, if it had caused an arms race that was five years ago, not today,” he added. Kasuri would not comment on whether the plant would produce nuclear weapons material, but said Islamabad would honor international regulations (Agence France-Presse/Middle East Times, July 29). Meanwhile, experts said Pakistan’s evolving nuclear capability would soon put every city in India within striking distance, the London Sunday Times reported. Former Pakistani Defense Minister Talat Masood said this weekend that the development was the result of a “secret arms race” between India and China. He said India’s attempts to keep pace with China’s nuclear development pushed Pakistan to increase its own capability. “It means self-reliance for Pakistan, which is now more important because the United States is favoring India (in nuclear cooperation),” he said. “It means we can make smaller [plutonium] weapons which are easier to fire at longer range.” Such weapons would give Pakistan a “second strike” capability, according to AFP. Anupam Shrivastava, director of the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia, said: “Unlike Pakistan, India has a no first strike policy. It completely changes India’s military planning because having plutonium gives Pakistan the option of deploying from land, sea or air.” “For Pakistan it’s a quantum leap. It gives them options to target all of India,” he added (Dean Nelson, The Sunday Times, July 30).
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