PAKISTAN IS to expand its nuclear deterrence against neighbouring rival India in response to the United States facilitating New Delhi’s entry into the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group and associated multilateral export control regimes.
Islamabad’s permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva said on Wednesday that the decision to augment its nuclear arsenal was taken last month by the National Command Authority, the country’s senior strategic affairs body controlling atomic weapons.
“The accumulative impact of this decision [of the US sponsoring India’s entry into the group] would be to destabilise the security environment in South Asia which would retard progress on non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament measures,” Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s envoy to Geneva-based conference said.
Group membership, Mr Akram declared, would enable India to further expand its nuclear co-operation agreements and enhance its nuclear weapons and delivery capability in response to which Pakistan would be “forced” into taking measures to “ensure the credibility of its strategic deterrence”.
Pakistan also questioned the US’s “discriminatory” decision in helping India join the group even though it was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Under the deal, which Pakistan criticised as being inequitable, India would separate its civilian and military reactors, placing 14 of its 22 nuclear facilities under international safeguards.
Pakistan also accused the US of backing India on the nuclear deal in order to sell it civilian atomic plants at great profit.