Having got used to excessive pampering at the hands of the US it is perhaps not at all surprising that a sense of disappointment and even frustration seems to have struck Pakistan, following the ‘successful’ India visit of President George Walker Bush. The ‘core’ reason for this overt and covert heart burning in that country is the civilian nuclear cooperation deal that the US has signed with India without bestowing an identical favour on its long time pet, though of suspect fidelity, in the sub-continent. For the Pakistani public as well as policy makers the Americans have committed a perfidy for which the rulers in Islamabad must make rapid amends—by turning to their more enduring patrons in China.

The Pakistani media has clearly echoed the widespread disillusion, maybe rage, in the country that has followed the Bush visit to South Asia. The comments in the Pakistani press also reflect a sense of inferiority complex. As one paper said, in contrast to ‘high profile engagements’ of Bush in India, he had signed no ‘glamorous deals’ in Pakistan while one writer made a snide remark about India’s ‘much-trumpeted democratic stature’. Another paper reminded its readers that Bush had (unjustly) read the riot act to Pakistan, telling Pakistan that its relationship with the US was ‘unequal’.

One Pakistani daily declared that America has strategic relationship with India, not Pakistan. Perhaps the most telling comment about the US relationship with the two major countries in South Asia was the headline: ‘India interests the US, Pakistan worries it’.

The Pakistani press comments are loaded with the usual litany about the failure of Bush to do anything to help resolve the Kashmir issue. But a great number of Pakistani editorials and commentators have urged their policy makers to play the China (nuclear) card. The Pakistani foreign ministry acknowledged this sentiment when its spokesperson said that Pakistan has ‘several other options’ if its efforts to get an India-like nuclear deal with the US fail. Anticipating the refusal of an India-type nuclear deal, the Pakistani foreign ministry, according to media reports, has already urged the government to step up its nuclear cooperation with China.

To egg the Chinese on to a next step in nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, Islamabad has started to propagate the theory, sometimes heard in the US, that Washington was propping up New Delhi as a counter to the growing Chinese clout in the world. The idea is to inject a deep wedge between New Delhi and Beijing and, if possible, halt the burgeoning ties between the two Asian giants. Most Pakistanis are uncomfortable with the progress of India-China ties.

The Pakistanis want to give a signal that they are going to start a nuclear arms race in the sub-continent even before the deal between India and the US has cleared the last and the most difficult hurdle—its passage through the US Congress. The Pakistani assertions that it will be seeking further nuclear cooperation with China to boost its energy requirement are unlikely to fool anyone in India. No sooner had the contours of the civilian nuclear deal between India and the US became known last year Pakistan had started its chorus of protests with the US. It also started secret negotiations with Beijing for further ‘cooperation’ in the nuclear field. Some time ago, news had ‘leaked’ (or planted) that Pakistan would go in for as many as 10 Chinese nuclear reactors.

For Pakistan turning to China for nuke help is quite natural. After all, much of the Pakistani nuclear programme was built around help from China—and stolen secrets from European laboratories. The more notable feature, however, was that the so-called non-proliferation champions in the West who are now crying hoarse against the Indo-US nuclear deal, had shut their eyes and ears to the transfer of nuclear know-how and technology from China to Pakistan. It is to be seen if these non-proliferation Ayatollahs are willing to gaze at the next big move on nuclear proliferation from China to Pakistan. While most of the world is being led to believe that Iran’s claim that it wants to develop a nuclear (enrichment) programme for peaceful (energy) purposes cannot be believed, Pakistan’s intentions should be even less doubtful, given the standing threat from its dictator, Gen Pervez Musharraf, that he would attack India with his nuclear bombs in the event of a war.

Pakistan’s energy (and security) needs are nowhere near that of India and it makes a false claim that its energy security can be built only around expansion of its nuclear programme. The vast gas (and oil) reserves of the Muslim countries are at Pakistan’s disposal, with some of them already offering it favourable terms. During his visit to the region, President Bush had said that he had no objections to a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan (which is expected to be extended to India). Gas pipelines from Central Asia to Pakistan are also on the anvil. Building gas pipelines to Pakistan from sources located in its west and north looks much more in the realm of reality than their extension to India, which still looks somewhat doubtful because of the unreliability of its safe passage across Pakistan’s volatile regions and the wavering stand of the Iranians on the basic issue of gas price.

Pakistan likes to make a case for more nuclear energy not so much to match India’s nuclear energy programme but to increase its nuclear arsenal, which according to some defence analysts in the West, already equals India’s. Right from its inception in 1947, Pakistan has been in the habit of demanding equal treatment, often even better treatment, with India in everything. This has been particularly true in matters relating to defence equipment. Following India’s first nuclear explosion in 1974, the then leader of Pakistan had announced that his countrymen would ‘eat grass’ if necessary but will have the nuclear bomb to match India’s. And in no time he had spotted the unquestionably talented A. Q Khan working as a metallurgist in Holland.

Having failed to get the same nuclear bargain—at least for the moment—from the US, Pakistan is now focusing its energies in building up global opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Muslim world is being told that a nation of infidels has been favoured with a nuclear deal while a brother nation (Iran) is being denied the same facility even when it avows to use the nukes for ‘peaceful purposes’. Other nations are being asked to beware of ‘proliferation’; a truly incredible message to come from Pakistan.

With equal vigour, Pakistan is also hawking the line that the nuclear deal between India and the US is directed against Beijing and, therefore, China must at once open its nuclear chests to the ‘peace-loving’ Pakistanis to counterbalance India’s ‘threat’. China has made the expected noise against the Indo-US nuclear deal. But the thing to watch is how it treats the Pakistani demand for a clutch of nuclear plants.


Courtesy : Syndicate Features

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