Pakistan’s nukes are safe

OF LATE, reports about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear assets have started appearing in the Western media with disturbing regularity. Not a week passes without some media outlet in the United States or Britain publishing a report, generally attributed to some think-tank or undisclosed ‘inside’ source, claiming that these assets can fall into the hands of religious extremists. These extremists are variously described as Islamist radicals or plain terrorists. Often, these reports describe in considerable detail what the US government would do, or can do, to preempt the take-over of Pakistani nukes by the terrorists. Although Pakistan’s nuclear programme has been the bull’s-eye ever since the publication of ‘The Islamic Bomb’ in seventies, it is quite intriguing that it has come under sharper focus of the Western media in the last couple of months. One may not like to say it with any amount of assertiveness, but there seems to be two, albeit completely unconnected, developments that come to mind as the plausible factors leading to this media campaign. First, the ongoing US-India nuclear cooperation talks that are likely to mature into a firm agreement very soon, have yet to be clothed with international legal sanctity. As India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it is not entitled to cooperation in nuclear technology development by a signatory of the NPT, which the United States is. By raising ‘alarm’ about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear programme India can be given the fig leaf of legitimacy. The second factor possibly may well be that a well-lobbied organised effort is afoot to link the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear assets with the victory of the so-called liberal democratic forces in Pakistan in the forthcoming elections over their opponents who are perceived in the West as harbingers of primitivism and confrontation.Without contesting the lobbyists’ right to sell their products one would, however, wonder at the propensity of lapping it up log, stock and barrel. One would also question the wisdom of various official quarters in being readily available for clarifications and rebuttals. In psychological warfare, which surely surrounds Pakistan’s nuclear programme, fighting is not about the authenticity of assertion but the public opinion space denied to the opponent.
Yes, there has been cooperation between Islamabad and Washington on how to make Pakistan’s nuclear assets more secure and safe. It is also true that over some years Pakistan received technical help in the form of personnel training and some equipment, worth about 100 million dollars, to quote Pakistan Foreign Office, “to learn from the best practices of other countries with regard to nuclear safety and export controls”. Mind you, these very experts in the think-tanks concede without hesitation that despite the ongoing cooperation the United States has not been able to share with Pakistan the so-called Permissive Action Links (PALs), devices that prevent unauthorised detonations. As for the safety of Pakistan’s strategic assets these are “as safe as of any other nuclear-weapon state”, says the FO spokesman, adding that “such reports appear off and on and regardless of their motives”. Pakistan is not the only country to receive the US assistance in this area: Under the Nunn-Lugar Program Russia receives US assistance worth one billion dollars every year to increase the safety of its some 6000 operational warheads. To keep the anti-Pakistan propaganda boiling a year-old report has been retrieved from the dustbin of a think-tank, which war-gamed various options before the US government to secure Pakistan’s nuclear assets from falling into wrong hands. The report talks of sending the American troops into Pakistan as well as isolating its nuclear bunkers by “saturating the surrounding areas with tens of thousands of high-powered mines dropped from the air and packed with antitank and anti-personnel munitions”.

Bomb that was not

AFTER the lies and manipulation of intelligence concerning Saddam’s WMD that preceded Washington’s Iraq adventure, there were always reasonable grounds for doubting George Bush’s similar saber-rattling assertions about Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons’ program. Now the revelations of the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) prove how justified those doubts were. Bush who had, among other things, claimed — completely against the record — that Iran had declared it wanted to build a nuclear weapons arsenal, is shown once again to be creating a fabric of misinformation, which he may well have been planning to use as justification for US airstrikes on Iran. The 16 US spy agencies that contribute to the NIE are, however, now saying that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, even though in 2005, the NIE asserted that the drive for nuclear armament was continuing. It is easy to believe that the CIA, which Bush made the fall guy for the false intelligence on Iraq’s WMD, is determined not to be manipulated this way again. Maybe the calculation at Langley has been that in the twilight months of his gloomy presidency, Bush was perfectly capable of one last shot at Tehran in revenge for the difficulties the Iranians have created for the US occupation forces in Iraq. The CIA recognized how dangerous and destabilizing such a stupid attack would be. The blustering that has come out of the White House in the wake of the release of the NIE assessment would almost be amusing if the subject were not so serious. A Bush spokesman has insisted that pressure on Iran must be maintained. Predictably, the British government has echoed this stance. It is more of a surprise that France’s President Sarkozy has delivered a similar judgment. Why has he chosen to rubberstamp the risky Bush policy when the facts on which it is based have been shown to be wrong? The NIE estimates that if Iran resumed its atomic weapons program today, the country could not build its first bomb until 2015. This may, however, itself prove to be as wrong as its 2005 assertion that the program was continuing.
What is clear, on the other hand, is that the path of negotiation led by China and Russia remains the best option. Since Bush will now find it almost impossible to find an excuse to attack Iran, the poison of the threat has been removed from negotiations. The responsibility now rests with Tehran to honor its international treaty obligations and let IAEA officials perform the full range of inspections they are entitled to make. Diplomatically, there is probably not a finer moment for the Iranians to do this. Bush has suffered yet another blow to what little remains of his credibility. Iran can drive the point home by yielding fully to the inspection regime to which it earlier agreed. If it refuses to do so, it may give Bush another albeit weak opportunity for renewed belligerence. Tehran should not, at the same time, forget this president’s well-known ability to act with catastrophic consequences on the basis of lies.

—Arab News