India, Pakistan likely to unite against nuke accord

By Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI (IPS): Only weeks after the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (CD) reconvened at Geneva, it appears likely that India and its regional rival, Pakistan, will make an alliance of strange bedfellows to obstruct negotiations for a fissile materials cut-off treaty (FMCT) which bans the production of materials used in nuclear weapons.

This could result in yet another setback to the goal of launching a universal, global, step-by-step process of nuclear disarmament. Neither India nor Pakistan signed the last major agreement in this process, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last autumn.

India and Pakistan oppose the FMCT for different reasons. India, which claims to fight a ''principled'' battle against nuclear weapons, is, strangely enough, one with the declared nuclear weapons-states (NWSs) in demanding that the FMCT be confined to ending further production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, and not be extended to existing stockpiles.

Pakistan, worried at the prospect of its relatively small holding of highly enriched uranium being capped before others' stockpiles are greatly pruned, demands that the FMCT cover all stockpiles, not just future production.

India is believed to have amassed enough plutonium for 40 to 60 bombs and Pakistan for 10 to 15 weapons, each enough to kill 100,000 plus civilians at one go. The five NWSs have weaponsgrade fissile material running into several thousand tons.

The rhetoric deployed by India and Pakistan does not reveal the true rationale of their queasiness with an FMCT. India argues that NWSs have a surfeit of fissile material and that an FMCT not linked to the total elimination of nuclear weapons would be inadequate and discriminatory.

New Delhi's new orientation is to oppose any measure of nuclear restraint unless it is directly linked to total nuclear disarmament. This almost all-or-nothing position is a departure from India's earlier step-by-step approach.

Islamabad has a less clearly enunciated policy and typically takes stances reactive to India's. While India opposes the nuclear non-proliferation treaty tooth and nail, Pakistan is willing to sign it if India does. This is true of the CTBT too.

At the moment, however, differences between the Indian and Pakistani stands remain masked under their support for the nonaligned group of 21 at the CD. The G-21, led by Malaysia, demand that the NWSs must agree to negotiate total elimination of nuclear weapons, at the same time as the FMCT is discussed.

The NWSs, especially the three western nuclear powers, resist this, arguing the time is not ripe, and that negotiations to eliminate weapons must be undertaken by the NWSs, not the CD.

However, the G-21 cite the July 1996 judgment of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, which calls for immediate negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons. The nonaligned group moved a resolution through the United Nations General Assembly in December, reiterating this.

Their case has been strengthened by two recent initiatives: the Canberra Commission's report and a statement signed in December by 60 former generals and admirals against nuclear weapons. The Canberra Commission was set up by Australia, and consisted of eminent experts, former diplomats and policy-makers. Its report strengthens the evolving norm against nuclear armaments.

The generals' statement is the most radical appeal issued so far by high-ranking military professionals, including former NATO commanders and a chief of the U.S. Strategic Air Command. It holds that nuclear weapons do not provide security, are fraught with grave dangers, have little strategic value and must be delegitimised. It rejects the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, on which the NWSs have relied throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Ironically, Indian policy-makers, who until recently described nuclear deterrence as an ''abhorrent doctrine'', are increasingly coming round to giving it respectability. This is reflected in New Delhi's position since June last that ''national security considerations'' impel it to oppose the CTBT.

India now says it won't close its nuclear option until everyone else does so. Earlier, it advocated a phased reduction of nuclear weapons and capabilities -- for example, the Rajiv Gandhi Plan of 1988, involving early obligations on the threshold states (India, Pakistan and Israel).

Why has India set its face against all nuclear restraint measures? There are several reasons, apart from cynicism among policy-makers about the prospect for nuclear disarmament (which has improved after the Cold War's end).

First, an effective FMCT will need even stricter verification than a CTBT, e.g. monitoring equipment inside core nuclear facilities. India has long resisted such monitoring and is deeply suspicious of an FMCT.

A second reason is India's changed perception of the CD as a negotiating forum. During the Cold War, India saw the CD as a worthy means of putting pressure for disarmament on the NWSs. This was broadly in keeping with India's non-aligned and pro- disarmament posture. Today, it views the CD as a forum for mounting pressure on the threshold states, in particular itself.

This impels India to weaken the CD's moral authority. That is precisely what it did last year by blocking the CTBT, and even vetoing a factual consensus resolution in the CD that there was no consensus on the CTBT.

India is so keen to oppose nuclear restraint, short of total disarmament, that it will risk defusing the present, weak, uncertain, reversible, but nevertheless real and new, post-cold war momentum favoring nuclear disarmament.

However, the realization is also sinking in that India would have to pay a high price for this. How high this might be was revealed in last October's vote in the UN for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council. India made an all out bid against Japan and spurned a compromise offer. But she lost by 142 votes to 40.

This was the most ignominious defeat India has ever suffered in a multilateral forum. It is now acknowledged to be a direct consequence of India's isolation, even among the Non-Aligned, on account of her stand on the CTBT.

Window: India is so keen to oppose nuclear restaint, short of total disarmament, that it will risk defusing the present, weak, uncertain, reversible, but nevertheless real and new, post-cold war momentum favoring nuclear disarmament.