Indo-Pak summit a chance to cut nuclear risk

By Sanjeev Miglani

NEW DELHI (Reuters): When former U.S. President Bill Clinton declared that South Asia was perhaps one of "the most dangerous places in the world today" few begged to differ.

Experts say that India and Pakistan, bristling with crude nuclear weapons, have been living on the edge for far too long and must address themselves to the nuclear risk above everything else in next week's summit.

Since they carried out tit-for-tat nuclear tests and declared themselves nuclear powers three years ago, the perennially hostile neighbors have been groping in the dark.

Neither side knows the other's nuclear capabilities, whether its secrecy-shrouded weapons are on hair-trigger alert or even who controls them.

"It is all very, very dangerous. There is a basic risk involved when there is a complete absence of dialog between two nuclear states," said P.R. Chari, director of the New Delhi-based Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

New Delhi has spelt out a nuclear doctrine that envisages weapons deployed on aircraft, missiles and at sea, but it has not announced a command-and-control system for such a force.

Pakistan has identified a national command system, but has not laid out a nuclear doctrine that tells the world -- and India in particular -- what to expect in a nuclear conflict.

Worse, there is no safety regime to check against misperceptions by either side or even a nuclear accident on a subcontinent riven by decades of distrust and misunderstandings.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf are not expected to make dramatic progress on issues that have defied solution for five decades.

But experts say they must try to push the nuclear clock back from the midnight hour.

Until Vajpayee's surprise offer to Musharraf for a meeting, the two sides were not even on talking terms.

"There has to be mutual dialog on nuclear risk reduction," agreed Shireen Mazari, director general of The Institute of Strategic Studies, a think-tank associated with the Pakistan's foreign ministry.

"...You must have dialog and resolve your political conflicts because where political conflicts exist there is always some level of nuclear risk," she said.

A year after they conducted underground nuclear explosions, India and Pakistan teetered on the brink of a third full-scale conflict over the bitterly disputed region of Kashmir. It would have been the world's first war between two nuclear states.

Since then there have been countless warnings from the international community, and paperback writers are now churning out chilling fictional accounts of a conventional war over Kashmir escalating into a nuclear exchange.

But the politicians and people of the two countries, many of whom rejoiced over the 1998 tests, rarely speak of the dangers of hostile neighbors living on the nuclear edge.

Vajpayee and then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif agreed to implement a set of measures designed to reduce nuclear risks during a summit in Lahore in 1999, but the undeclared war in northern Kashmir three months later pushed everything into cold storage.

"There is a touching faith here in the wisdom of our leaders that somehow we will not go over the edge," said retired Indian navy admiral Raja Menon.

But military experts believe a simple error of judgment by either side could be catastrophic.

One army brigadier, painting a hypothetical scenario, said unusual activity at a nuclear site of one country could trigger a rapid and dangerous chain of events on the other side.

"Suppose there is some movement at Kahuta (Pakistan's nuclear site) and we conclude, right or wrong, they are preparing for an offensive strike. We have to react, or else it will be too late."

Since they decided to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, both nations have frantically pursued missile development programs aimed at delivering these crude weapons.

India's short-range Prithvi missile and Pakistan's Hatf missile are extremely destabilizing because they allow very little reaction time, said Gurmeet Kanwal, an expert at the Indian government-funded Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses.

He said both sides could enter into an agreement on the non- use of such short-range missile for nuclear deterrence.

Among the other steps that India and Pakistan agreed to during the Lahore summit were to consult each other on nuclear doctrines, give advance notification of ballistic missile tests and set up communication mechanisms to prevent misunderstandings.

"Both leaders have no higher responsibility than to reduce nuclear dangers on the subcontinent," wrote Michael Krepon, President Emeritus of the Washington-based Henry L.Stimson Center in an article in Indian newsmagazine Outlook.

"There's a great deal of work to do to increase nuclear safety; much time has already been lost."