Crisis India-Pakistan:
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uit de Indiase, Pakistaanse en internationale media.

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South Asians Against Nukes List, October 16, 2006

North Korea does it

M.B. Naqvi

On eighth October, North Korea test exploded a nuclear device. From now on North Korea is to be treated as a nuclear capable power. It is a portentous development in Asian politics. Asia was already experiencing barely hidden inter-se hostile diplomacy by great powers, led by the US and emergent China. This looks likely to become more hostile and frenetic. For, the way Americans are likely to encourage Japan to militarise, China will be alienated. It needs being said that Asian peoples will not be involved; the struggle is among great military powers for the control and domination of Asia's vast resources.
Japan claims to be the most threatened by the military capabilities of North Korea - an area that had been in Japanese occupation until the Second World War and where anti-Japanese sentiment is alive. The threat inherent in this post explosion situation is likely to be perceived differently by different countries. For the US, it punctures its vast prestige and influence; it will no longer be able to do just about anything; the deterrent power it had stands degraded somewhat. China's regret and disapproval, though genuine, is more for the record. Even Pakistan and India have made their disapproval known, though it is a sin that they had themselves committed only 8 years ago.
South Korea's official establishment is formally among those who feel to be in danger from North Korea's nuclear capability, though this alienation from North Korea is far less among the people in the South, who appear to set more store on pan-Korean Nationalism. No one else in Asia, except anti-nuclear campaigners, will feel threatened by North Korea's Bomb. After all, North Korea is a small country that is not inimical to most Asian countries. All its militancy is directed at Japan that had mistreated it so badly in the past that its scars are still visible. It has not forgotten the war in 1950s the US led against it for purely cold war reasons. It is friendly to Russia and China for historical reasons; they had also come to its aid in 1950s.
What threat most Asians will feel is the Japanese reaction to it - and to a smaller extent South Korea's. These two powers might opt for building their own atomic weapons. South Korea's behaviour in atomic research had raised the hackles of IAEA experts at one stage. But the matter was somehow resolved, even if it was not hushed up. North Korea having gone nuclear, the common people in the South are not likely to become too anti-DPRK. But all that will assume a different aspect if Japan is persuaded to change its peace constitution - that outlaws war for Japan - and become an atomic power. Then, the people of the South - who share the anti-Japanese sentiment with their Northern brethren may more easily acquiesce in South Korea's own Bomb. Proliferation is inherent in the situation anyhow.
One thing can be said about Japanese reaction to North Korean Bomb. A certain amount of commonsense and a sense of proportion needs to be deployed: North Korea is no real threat to Japan. Japan is in fact a great military power as it is; it spends each year over $ 40 billion on defence. It is nearly equal to what India and Pakistan spend on defence together. True, it does not have nuclear weapons. But in most other departments it should be treated as a great military power. And making atomic weapons will require only political decision and a few months. Can North Korea mount an invasion of Japan? no matter how many nuclear weapons it can manage to fabricate? The very idea of it is ridiculous. North Koreans' perceived threats to their own security should explain its behaviour; it has reasons to fear the US-Japan military alliance. It is still formally in a state of war with the US.
As soon as there is the prospect of Japan going nuclear becomes closer, there will be real turmoil throughout Asia. Japan's conduct in the 20th Century, beginning with defeating Imperial Russia and occupying Korean areas and going on to invade China are a painful memory for most Asians. It occupied nearly all of Southeast Asia during Second World War and it was knocking at the doors of India. No Asian has forgotten that experience. Japan's going nuclear will be a cat among pigeons. Strongest reaction will that be from China, though other Southeast Asians' fright ought not to be forgotten. Japanese Bomb will broadly recreate the later 1930s' Asia.
Who can forget the US has already an alliance - a series of inter-connecting treaties with Australasian and Asian powers - that spans from South Korea through Japan, Taiwan to Australia and several other arrangements with South East Asian countries and has the effect of a military alignment that only needs an enemy after the Soviets died and China became a semi capitalist country. But this grand line up exists. India can be said to be a part of US power system; Indians and Americans are jointly patrolling the Straits of Malacca already. Pakistan also qualifies for this honour but for its greater relevance to Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics - and also perhaps its close relations with China take away something from its pro-Americanness.
In this context, the moralistic deprecation of nuclear proliferation by those who not only have nuclear weapons but greatly benefit from the importance and influence these weapons yield is disgusting. All major powers today are nuclear capable (except Japan) but want to limit the spreading of such weapons to others. There is a lot of self-serving moralistic rhetoric against proliferation that actually aims to preserve their monopoly or semi-monopoly now. It does not behove India, Pakistan or Israel to preach abstinence to others after committing this cardinal sin themselves. If nuclear weapons are bad for humanity, let them be outlawed in toto; why limit them to the P5 and any other gate crasher?
The fact cannot be ignored that possession of nuclear weapons is thought to be a sufficient deterrent to being aggressed against. North Korea will perhaps feel safe against an American-led invasion by threatening to nuke American troops in South Korea or in Japan. Well, that is the accepted wisdom, though it may not apply in every situation - as it scarcely does in the case of Indo-Pakistan standoff. But so long as great powers gain benefits by virtue of being nuclear capable, there will be strong temptation by all threatened states to go nuclear. That is how the nuclear club strength stands at nine.
Proliferation is aided by reason. International relations are not based on sweet reasonableness or morality or international law. What counts is military (especial also nukes') power. The stronger you are you get better terms. The US has shown, more clearly after the disappearance of the Soviets, that you can dominate the whole world by virtue of possessing overwhelming military power, based on nukes and the panapoly of scientific and technological means of keeping everyone under surveillance. All your economic shortcomings can be rectified if you have the power to impose upon weaker states with resources.
Few can expect the ninth entry into this exclusive club to be the last. The way the world works also shows how to become powerful and get your way in your own neighbourhood by possessing atomic weapons and the means of delivering them. It is sad. If a change from this sordid power politics is desired, the thing to do is to outlaw nuclear weapons and keep them outlawed by force of public opinion.

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The News International, October 14, 2006

Grim warning from North Korea

by Praful Bidwai

North Korea has shocked and challenged the world by punching a big hole through the global nuclear order. The effects of its test will ricochet for a long time, changing the Asian balance of power and impacting Iran.
The explosion underscores some plain unvarnished wisdom: the best way to deal with "problem cases" like North Korea is to discard nuclear weapons as a currency of power by pursuing the global nuclear disarmament agenda. The alternative is to risk a more unsafe world with yet more nuclear-armed states.
North Korea shows that a small (pop 23 million), poor, economically and politically isolated country, which recently experienced famines, can build nuclear weapons if it is determined to. Splitting the atom requires neither high science nor very advanced technology.
The science is more than 60 years old, and the technology no more sophisticated than what a car garage has--once you have fissile material or reactors. The test sets a terrible example. Some 40 countries have significant civilian nuclear programmes, which can be diverted to make weapons.
Why did North Korea test? It has a long history of conflict with South Korea and the United States. During the 1950-53 Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur had plans to launch nuclear strikes against the North. The Cold War has not ended in the Korean peninsula.
More recently, President George W. Bush torpedoed the reconciliation process between the Koreas. In 2002, he named North Korea an "exis of evil" state and reneged on aid promises. This negated its nuclear activities.
In 2003, Pyongyang quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Six-party Talks with Pyongyang (involving the US, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea) faltered largely because of inept US diplomacy. Yet, in September 2005, Pyongyang signed a preliminary denuclearisation agreement in Beijing. Four days later, Washington declared economic war on it.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq, North Korea became desperate to prevent a regime change in Pyongyang. More recently, it became uncomfortable with the appointment of militarist Shinzo Abe as Japan's prime minister and the lead taken by South Korea's Ban Ki-Moon in the election of the United Nations secretary general.
On October 3, Pyongyang foreign ministry said: "A people without a reliable war deterrent are bound to meet a tragic death and [loss of] sovereigntyŠ This is a bitter lesson taught by the bloodshedŠ in different parts of the world." The blast followed six days later.
North Korea's test exposes the folly of relying on purely physical controls--like International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards under the NPT--to prevent nuclear materials from being put to military use. IAEA safeguards are leak-prone.
In some past years, IAEA inspections failed to account for over 20 kg of plutonium in reprocessing plants--enough for half-a-dozen bombs. Besides, a country can quit the NPT at three months' notice. That's what Pyongyang did, and Iran might do if cornered.
More important than safeguards, and critical to a country's decision not to cross the nuclear-weapons threshold is its political will. Without this, safeguards, even sanctions, won't work. In many countries, this will has got greatly weakened--because the nuclear-weapons states (NWSs) have refused to undertake nuclear arms reduction, leave alone disarmament. Thousands of nukes remain on high alert.
The five NPT-recognised NWSs have flagrantly violated its Article VI, which mandates complete elimination of nuclear weapons--a legal obligation under a 1996 World Court verdict.
India and Pakistan slavishly imitate them in their hypocrisy. India's nuclear deal with the US is widely seen as involving double standards: indulgence for America's friends (India, Israel, Pakistan), and punishment for Iran or N. Korea. But double standards are not Washington's monopoly. All NWSs practise them.
The world has condemned the North Korean test. But it has few options to deal with Pyongyang. Military force isn't one. President Bush has ruled it out--not out of magnanimity, but compulsion. The US is bogged down in Iraq.
Over 37,000 US troops are stationed in South Korea. North Korea's 1.2 million-strong army, with 11,000 artillery pieces, and an arsenal of missiles, can make devastating conventional strikes against South Korea and even Japan, where another 40,000 US troops are stationed. There's the risk of a nuclear attack.
India and Pakistan have strongly condemned North Korea. This is another gross instance of hypocrisy. Pyongyang has cited the same reasons for going nuclear that they did. It doesn't lie in India's mouth to condemn Pyongyang. Nor is it remotely credible for Pakistan to do so after Dr A Q Khan allegedly traded uranium centrifuges with North Korea's missiles. Today, India and Pakistan both practise the same hypocrisy and double standards for which they (rightly) criticised the N-5.
India has strongly warned against "the dangers of clandestine proliferation". The reference is to Pakistan. Some Indian commentators cite President Musharraf's "In the Line of Fire", which says: "Dr Khan transferred nearly two dozen P-1 and P-11 centrifuges to North Korea" along with auxiliary equipment and instruments.
However, on all available evidence, the Korean test used plutonium, not uranium. The plutonium came from a reactor at Yongbyon, built by the Soviet Union in 1965. North Korea removed 8,000 used-fuel rods from it and extracted 25-30 kg of plutonium, enough to make 4-6 bombs. It probably ran the reactor between February 2003 and April 2005 too, and removed some more rods. It would be foolish for India to use the Korean test as a stick to beat Pakistan with. The demand that Dr Khan be subjected to interrogation for his Korean operations won't cut much ice anywhere.
North Korea's test will strengthen the non-proliferation lobby in the US and create more difficulties for the India-US nuclear deal, which already faces hurdles. Japan and South Korea would be singularly ill-advised to go nuclear in response to North Korea. That will trigger an arms race involving China. The whole world will be destabilised under the impact of such an arms race. If the US develops a "theatre ballistic missile defence" ("Star Wars") shield for Northeast Asia, China will respond with utmost hostility.
The time has come for a radically different approach, which reforms the global nuclear order by honestly implementing the two-way bargain on which it was originally based. Under the bargain, the non-nuclear weapons-states agreed not to make or acquire nuclear weapons and subjected themselves to IAEA inspections. In return, the NWSs committed themselves to serious negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide. However, the NWSs have cheated on their part of the bargain.
The remedy lies in negotiating a return to the global disarmament agenda. What the world needs is de-alerting of all nuclear weapons, separating nuclear warheads from delivery vehicles, and phased destruction of nuclear armaments. Regional initiatives are also necessary to dissuade North Korea from a weapons programme by offering it security assurances and generous agricultural and industrial assistance and food and fuel aid. Such arrangements can lead to the creation of a Northeast Asian nuclear weapons-free zone which addresses the security concerns of all the regional states.
The world cannot afford any more breakouts before it takes the nuclear bull by the horns.

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Tehelka.com, October 14, 2006

Why Afzal Must Not Be Executed

Hanging him would be poor statecraft. What's worse, the sentence is legally flawed

by Praful Bidwai

The "black warrant" issued to Mohammed Afzal for his involvement in the 2001 Parliament attack has triggered widespread popular protests in Kashmir and revulsion among the country's liberals. Jammu and Kashmir's ruling coalition and chief minister, indeed all parties barring the BJP, have called for clemency for Afzal. The issue has precipitated a national-level polarisation between the opponents and supporters of Afzal's execution.

The second camp holds the strangest of bedfellows: on the one hand, Hindutva ultra-nationalists, for whom counter-terrorism is a stick to beat Muslims with, and on the other, rabid Islamist-separatists like Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who want a "martyr" to their anti-India cause.

Among their opponents are those who believe that hanging Afzal will have terrible political consequences, much graver than the execution of Maqbool Butt in 1984, which was among the factors which greatly increased Kashmiri popular alienation from India and eventually precipitated the azaadi movement. The timing of the execution, on the last Friday of Ramzan, and at a delicate political juncture, couldn't have been more disastrous.

The political argument cannot be lightly dismissed. Yet, there are three other, weightier, arguments too.

First and foremost is the moral case against the death penalty per se - far and away the most powerful argument. It holds that no individual or institution has the right to take the life of a human being. That violates the fundamental human compact on which any society aspiring to be civilised is based. Irrespective of their causes or consequences, there are some things that you simply don't do. Killing another person, except in self-defence, is one. A legitimate State is duty-bound to defend life, not cause death.

Capital punishment is always unacceptable, however heinous the crime. It is a crude form of retribution, in which bloodthirst and revenge masquerade as righteousness - without remedying or redeeming the original crime. The death penalty brutalises society and gives legitimacy to barbaric revenge.

It's a proven fact that the best judicial systems can go wrong by holding an innocent person guilty. They're intrinsically fallible. Capital punishment leaves no room for correction. Death is final, irreversible.

In the United States, over 500 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. But more than 120 condemned prisoners were released because they had been wrongfully convicted. Last year, the only woman ever sent to the electric chair in Georgia was granted pardon - 60 years too late. She was a Black maid who killed a White man who held her in slavery and threatened her life.

Capital punishment is typically awarded to the poor, illiterate and otherwise underprivileged people who find it hard to defend themselves. Former Chief Justice PN Bhagwati, no less, called it a sentence quintessentially targeted at the poor.

The death penalty isn't a deterrent. In Canada, the homicide rate per 100,000 people fell from 3.09 in 1975, a year before abolition of the death penalty, to 1.73 in 2003. In 2000, The New York Times found that over two decades, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty was 48 to 101 percent higher than in non-death penalty states. In India, the state of Travancore recorded fewer murders after abolition. The US homicide rate is four times higher than in abolitionist Europe.

Death is probably even less of a deterrent for terrorists driven by extremist or deeply irrational ideologies.

The second, jurisprudential argument pertains to one of the central doctrines under which numerous death sentences have been pronounced in India (and elsewhere): waging war against the State. This is a modern version of lese majeste, or affront to the Sovereign or Crown who claims divine authority.

This early medieval doctrine has an obnoxious theological origin: treason not only offends social mores; it's a crime against God's arrangements on earth. Like an unpardonable sin against God, it "cannot be expiated", but must be axiomatically punished by death.

Such reasoning should be abhorrent to any civilised conscience. In India, a worthy sentiment is gathering in favour of abrogating Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises homosexuality because it's held be "against the order of nature". Lese majeste is its analogue.

The third argument is a legal one. The punishment awarded to Afzal is grossly disproportionate. Afzal was guilty not of murder, but of conspiracy to commit murder. He was tried under pota, which makes a clear distinction between terrorist acts causing death, and conspiracy in causing them. It punishes the second with life imprisonment, the first with death.

Yet, the courts sentenced Afzal under a much harsher law (Section 302 of IPC, etc). But draconian punishment shouldn't be applied under a general criminal law when a terrorism-specific law is in existence.

Even in the Gandhiji assassination case, the courts didn't interpret Section 302 as applying to conspirators. Gopal Godse, who was deeply involved in the conspiracy, was not executed; his brother was.

An element of anti-terrorist zeal is evident in the simplistic manner in which our courts have dealt with complex issues of differential culpability, especially after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Kehar Singh was executed although he did not kill her.

The evidence of conspiracy against Afzal hinges on his own testimony - he confessed that he brought one of the five men involved in the Parliament attack of 2001 from Srinagar to Delhi and helped him buy a used car - and on the recovery of explosives from his house, and most crucially, on records of cellphone calls to the five.

But the evidence is open to doubt. The explosives recovery record is not watertight. The police couldn't explain why they broke into his house during his absence while he was in jail - when the landlord had the key.

The cellphone record traced several calls from the five men to number 98114-89429. The police allegedly impounded the instrument from Afzal while arresting him in Srinagar. The instrument had no sim card. So the only identity mark was its imei number, unique to each instrument.

There are only two ways to find this tell-tale number: open the instrument, or dial a code and have the number displayed. But the officer who wrote the recovery memo said on oath that he neither opened nor operated the instrument. Besides, the testimonies regarding the date of purchase of the phone with a new sim card (December 4) and its first recorded operation (November 6) don't match.

The conclusion is plain: there's a large grey area in the evidence, which calls for leniency in determining Afzal's guilt and punishment. The courts took the opposite view. This grave flaw must be corrected.

Afzal's death sentence violates the Supreme Court's own guidelines, which say that capital punishment should be awarded in "the rarest of rare cases" - when a murder is conducted in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical and revolting manner or is targeted at a specific community or caste. In the Machhi Singh case, the court stipulated five considerations: motive, socially abhorrent nature of the crime (e.g. targeting dalits or minorities), magnitude, and the victim's personality. These don't collectively apply to Afzal.

Yet another factor speaks in Afzal's favour. He is a surrendered militant, who induced two others to give up militancy, but was harassed by the Special Task Force and subjected to extortion. It was an stf officer, Tariq, who asked Afzal to bring Mohammed to Delhi. In the murky world of Kashmir's insurgency-counter-insurgency, it's hard to pinpoint crime and complicity. By all indications, Afzal got embittered by the stf's misdemeanour, extortion and criminality.

Afzal is by no means beyond the pale of reform. President Kalam should act sagaciously and commute his sentence. It's his constitutional and moral duty to prevent miscarriage of justice and apply a humane touch.

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Hindustan Times, October 13, 2006

Pakistan skips conclave, India wonders why

NEW DELHI, India, Oct 13 -- At a time when the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) has urged India and Pakistan to impose a joint moratorium on the use of landmines, India was looking at the possibility of making some headway in this direction. Especially after Pakistan agreed to send a delegation, including military officers, to take part in an international conclave on Landmines and Explosive Remnants of War:
The Human Costs and International Responses, organised by United Service Institution, India's oldest think-tank dating back to 1870. The three service chiefs are the patrons of USI. But the Pakistanis "backed out abruptly" without communicating to the USI the reasons for staying away from the two-day event, attended by delegates from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Thailand, Canada and the Netherlands. The USI, which was looking forward to sharing perceptions on mine action programmes with Pakistan, would have appreciated if they had honoured their commitment.
Brigadier Arun Sahgal (retd), who heads the USI's Centre for Strategic Studies and Simulation and was involved in organising the conclave, said, "It is disappointing that they did not turn up. We had booked rooms. The question on everybody's mind was why did they stay away. It became a matter of intense speculation."The event, which ended on Thursday, was attended by senior officers from the army headquarters, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of External Affairs. Both India and Pakistan have not signed the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, which banned the use of anti-personnel landmines in 1997. Both rely heavily on landmines to secure their borders, as was evident during Operation Parakram launched after the December 2001 Parliament attack.
The Pakistanis had to make a "country presentation" and take part in panel discussions on the human cost of landmines and mine action. A participant said, "At a time when the world is trying to evolve a mine action strategy and is making efforts to raise awareness, inputs from Pakistan would have been interesting. The conclave could have served as a platform for India and Pakistan to share views on mine action as the former is reportedly the fifth largest landmine power in the world and Pakistan is the sixth."The vision for the United Nations Inter-Agency Mine Action Strategy for 2006-10 was a world free of landmine threat and explosive remnants of war, where individuals lived in safe environment.

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Indian Express, October 13, 2006

US to Pak: End terror attacks aimed at India

WASHINGTON, ISLAMABAD, OCTOBER 12: The US has asked Pakistan to use its influence with terror groups to completely stop attacks on India, US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said today. “We obviously wish to see no more terrorism emanating from Kashmiri militants,” Burns said here. “We have told the Pakistani government to use influence with these terrorist groups to curb and stop altogether any attacks on India,” he said. On the evidence India has shared with the US regarding Pakistan’s role in the Mumbai blasts, Burns said the US State Department was yet to study it. Meanwhile, President Musharraf has rejected Indian allegations that the ISI was involved in the Mumbai blasts. “We are against terrorism and the Mumbai blast is a terrorist act. There is no doubt in my mind and there is no doubt in the ISI’s mind, he told reporters in Islamabad. He warned that Pakistan will be “no more” if extremists wrest control. “ I am a moderate and strongly believe that the moderates must win. If the extremists win, then Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan will be no more there.”

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DefenseNews.com, October 13, 2006

EU, India To Boost Exchange of Intelligence

by Reuters, Helsinki

European Union and Indian leaders agreed on Oct. 13 to boost cooperation in fighting terrorism, particularly by focusing on improving the flow of intelligence.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said exchange of information would add to wider international cooperation, such as work for a U.N. convention against terrorism.
"The recent bombings in Mumbai as well as the earlier bombings in London, Madrid and Srinagar remind us that terrorism remains the most serious threat to democratic, open and pluralistic countries," Singh told a news conference after a summit with EU leaders in Finland.
The Indian government has accused Pakistan of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 180 people in July. Pakistan denies the charge.
" ... At the bilateral level we have also agreed to exchange information, exchange intelligence and other related matters between EU and India," Singh said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said there was room for improvement in sharing information between the 25-nation bloc and India to help counter terrorism.
"We are beginning to think about how to exchange, in a much more efficient manner, intelligence," he told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.
Asked about the role of Pakistan in efforts to combat terrorism, Solana said all countries needed to work harder.
"I think everybody has to do more, not only Pakistan, everybody has to do more. All the countries have to do more in order to lower the level of terrorism in the world," he said.

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Inter Press Service, October 12, 2006

N. Korean Blast May Hit Indo-US Nuclear Deal

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Oct 12 (IPS) - How is North Korea's atomic explosion, signifying the latest breakout from the global nuclear restraint regime, likely to affect the preceding two breakout cases, India and Pakistan?
Eight years after the two South Asian states blasted their way into the world's 'nuclear club', it seems probable that their full integration and "normalisation" as its members will meet with more resistance than it did before North Korea's Oct. 9 nuclear test.
India and Pakistan are also likely to trade some hostile rhetoric over Islamabad's past role in nuclear proliferation to North Korea. This is the South Asian sideshow to the main post- October 9 global drama, which has so far seen all seven self-proclaimed nuclear weapons- states (NWSs) of the world barring North Korea strongly condemn its test explosion.
New Delhi was quick to respond to North Korea's blast by describing it as "unfortunate", and violative of that country's "international commitments, [and] jeopardising peace, stability and security on the Korean peninsula and in the region." It also said that the test "highlights the dangers of clandestine proliferation."
This was widely seen, and energetically publicised in the media, as referring to Pakistan, which had secret dealings with North Korea going back to the 1980s. The Pakistan-based shady A.Q. Khan network is believed to have sold uranium enrichment technology and centrifuges to North Korea in return for its "Nodong" series of ballistic missiles.
President Gen.Pervez Musharraf in his recently released memoir, 'In the Line of Fire', writes: "Dr Khan transferred nearly two dozen P-1 and P-11 centrifuges to North Korea. He also provided North Korea with a flow meter, some special oils for centrifuges, and coaching on centrifuge technology..."
Many Indian commentators harp on this admission. "They want to use this as a stick to beat Pakistan with," says Kamal Mitra Chenoy of the School of International Studies at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University here.
"Some stridently demand that the United States should insist that Khan be subjected to interrogation and a full inquiry into the whole issue. But this is a childish attitude, which exaggerates the degree of Pakistani involvement in North Korea and tries to settle regional scores which are largely extraneous to the Korean nuclear issue," Chenoy added."
The Khan network did supply uranium enrichment technology to North Korea. But the material used in the test is believed to be plutonium, extracted by North Korea from a small research reactor built by the former Soviet Union in 1965. So the Indian demand for an external inquiry into Khan's activities is unlikely to cut much ice.
Besides, the U.S. will be extremely reluctant to mount pressure on Musharraf when it badly needs his help in Afghanistan and Pakistan's border areas. In the past, Pakistan has rejected outright all demands for Khan's interrogation. He is currently under house arrest.
Pakistan's argument that its government had nothing to do with Khan's "autonomous" operations does not sound credible.
In Pakistan, sensitive nuclear designs and materials, including heavy equipment such as 6 feet-tall metal cylinders, could not have been carried out of the Khan Laboratories premises to an airport and then by a military plane to Pyongyang without the government's knowledge or complicity. At least 18 tonnes of material was reportedly transported during the 1990s.
The U.S. was aware of Khan's activities, but chose to ignore its own intelligence, especially after September 11, 2001. It is likely to do the same today.
However, if Pakistan's case that it had no role in North Korea's nuclear programme is weak, India's charges against Pyongyang also lack credibility. New Delhi self-righteously claims that its own 1998 tests breached no international obligations: it has never signed the NPT.
North Korea too did not violate any "international commitments". It walked out of the NPT in 2003, in keeping with its Article X. India's 1998 tests could be legitimately considered to have jeopardised "peace, stability and security" in South Asia, just as the Korean test did in Northeast Asia.
The plain truth is that both India and Pakistan are behaving like the older NWSs, and imitating their double standards and hypocrisy: non-members of the nuclear club must practise abstinence, but the members keep their weapons because they are "responsible".
Yet, the two arrivistes are second or third-class members of the Club, not in its top league. They, especially Pakistan, may come under pressure to demonstrate that they have taken specific strong measures to prevent the spread of nuclear or missile technology.
India will certainly find the going has got tough for Congressional approval of the nuclear deal signed with the U.S. in July last year.
"The Korean test is a setback for the process of its ratification, which already faces hurdles", argues M.V. Ramana, an independent nuclear affairs researcher, attached to Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore. "October 9 delivered a seismic shock to U.S. policy-makers, and that's likely to stiffen the opposition to the deal. It seems almost certain that it won't be passed in the 'lame duck' session of Congress, which meets in November."
If ratification is delayed to next year, the entire lengthy process of legislation will have to be gone through all over again in the new Congress. The longer the delay, the higher the chances that the deal will lose momentum and new obstacles will arise.
A Bill which enables the deal's implementation is stuck in the Senate (although the House has passed a similar resolution). Many Senators have hedged the Bill in with conditions that restrict the scope of U.S.-India civilian nuclear cooperation, or demand guarantees that India is exercising nuclear restraint, including in fissile material production.
New Delhi has found some of these unacceptable or excessively restrictive of its sovereignty. "The conditions could become tighter in the weeks to come because of the anxiety North Korea's test has provoked," says Ramana. "Next year, another ball-game starts, although there are no principled objections to the deal, and a lot of backing for it."
After the Korean test, U.S. non-proliferation experts have become more assertive. They call for a less permissive, stricter approach to overlooking breaches of nuclear restraint norms.
Similarly, the Democrats, now in the ascendant, will resist granting an easy victory to President Bush as his ratings plummet.
Finally, there's growing fear that yet more countries, in particular Iran and South Korea, could draw negative lessons from the India-U.S. case and consider going nuclear.
"This could mean yet more amendments to Congressional Bills, and greater delays," says Ramana. "India will now find it hard to demand that nuclear supplies to it should continue even if it conducts a test."
This is bad news for the India-U.S. deal, but probably good news for the cause of nuclear restraint, arms reduction and disarmament.

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Dawn, October 12, 2006

Musharraf's Coup - Seven Years Later

by Pervez Hoodbhoy

Some had feared - while others had hoped - that General Pervez Musharraf's coup of October 12, 1999, would bring the revolution of Kemal Ataturk to a Pakistan and wrest the country from the iron grip of mullahs. But years later a definitive truth has emerged. Like the other insecure governments before it, both military and civilian, the present regime also has a single point agenda - to stay in power at all costs. It therefore does whatever it must and Pakistan falls further from any prospect of acquiring modern values, and of building and strengthening democratic institutions.
The requirements for survival of the present regime are clear: on the one hand the Army leadership knows that its critical dependence upon the West requires that it be perceived abroad as a liberal regime pitted against radical Islamists. But, on the other hand, in actual fact, to preserve and extend its grip on power, it must preserve the status quo.
The staged conflicts between General Musharraf and the mullahs are therefore a regular part of Pakistani politics. This September, nearly seven years later, the religious parties needed no demonstration of muscle power for winning two major victories in less than a fortnight; just a few noisy threats sufficed. From experience they knew that the Pakistan Army and its sagacious leader - of "enlightened moderation" fame - would stick to their predictable pattern of dealing with Islamists. In a nutshell: provoke a fight, get the excitement going, let diplomatic missions in Islamabad prepare their briefs and CNN and BBC get their clips - and then beat a retreat. At the end of it all the mullahs would get what they want, but so would the General.
Examples abound. On 21st April 2000, General Musharraf announced a new administrative procedure for registration of cases under the Blasphemy Law. This law, under which the minimum penalty is death, has frequently been used to harass personal and political opponents. To reduce such occurrences, Musharraf's modified procedure would have required the local district magistrate's approval for registration of a blasphemy case. It would have been an improvement, albeit a modest one. But 25 days later - on the 16th of May 2000 - under the watchful glare of the mullahs, Musharraf hastily climbed down: "As it was the unanimous demand of the ulema, mashaikh and the people, therefore, I have decided to do away with the procedural change in the registration of FIR under the Blasphemy Law".
Another example. In October 2004, as a new system for issuing machine readable passports was being installed, Musharraf's government declared that henceforth it would not be necessary for passport holders to specify their religion. Expectedly this was denounced by the Islamic parties as a grand conspiracy aimed at secularizing Pakistan and destroying its Islamic character. But even before the mullahs actually took to the streets, the government lost nerve and the volte-face was announced on 24 March, 2005. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the decision to revive the religion column was made else, "Qadianis and apostates would be able to pose as Muslims and perform pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia".
But even these climb downs - significant as they are - are less dramatic than the astonishing recent retreat over reforming the Hudood Ordinance, a grotesque imposition of General Zia-ul-Haq's government unparalleled both for its cruelty and irrationality. Enacted into the law in 1979, it was conceived as part of a more comprehensive process for converting Pakistan into a theocracy governed by Sharia laws. These laws prescribe death by stoning for married Muslims who are found guilty of extra-marital sex (for unmarried couples or non-Muslims, the penalty is 100 lashes). The law is exact in stating how the death penalty is to be administered: "Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped".
Rape is still more problematic. A woman who fails to prove that she has been raped is automatically charged with fornication and adultery. Under the Hudood Law, she is considered guilty unless she can prove her innocence. Proof of innocence requires that the rape victim must produce "at least four Muslim adult male witnesses, about whom the Court is satisfied" who saw the actual act of penetration. Inability to do so may result in her being jailed, or perhaps even sentenced to death for adultery.
President and Chief of Army Staff General Musharraf, and his Citibank Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, proposed amending the Hudood Ordinance. They sent a draft for parliamentary discussion in early September, 2006. As expected, it outraged the fundamentalists of the MMA, the main Islamic parliamentary opposition. MMA members tore up copies of the proposed amendments on the floor of the National Assembly and threatened to resign en masse. The government cowered abjectly and withdrew.
Musharraf's government has proved no more enlightened, or more moderate or more resolute and behaved no differently from the more than half a dozen civilian administrations, including two terms of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister and several "technocrat" regimes. None made a serious effort to confront or reform these laws.
But the pattern is broader then deference to the mullahs. General Musharraf has been willing to use the iron fist in other circumstances. Two examples stand out: Waziristan and Balochistan. Each offers instruction.
In 2002, presumably on Washington's instructions, the Pakistan Army established military bases in South Waziristan which had become a refuge for Taliban and Al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan. It unleashed artillery and US-supplied Cobra gunships. By 2005 heavy fighting had spread to North Waziristan and the army was bogged down.
The generals, safely removed from combat areas, and busy in building their personal financial empires, ascribed the resistance to "a few hundred foreign militants and terrorists". But the Army was taking losses (how serious is suggested by the fact that casualty figures were not revealed), soldiers rarely ventured out from their forts, morale collapsed as junior officers wondered why they were being asked to attack their ideological comrades - the Taliban - at American instructions. Reportedly, local clerics refused to conduct funeral prayers for soldiers killed in action.
In 2004, the army made peace with the militants in South Waziristan. It conceded the territory to them, which had made the militants immensely stronger. A similar "peace treaty" had been signed on 1 September 2006 in the town of Miramshah, in North Waziristan, now firmly in the grip of the Pakistani Taliban.
The Miramshah treaty met all demands made by the militants: the release of all jailed militants; dismantling of army checkpoints; return of seized weapons and vehicles; the right of the Taliban to display weapons (except heavy weapons); and residence rights for fellow fighters from other Islamic countries. As for "foreign militants" who Musharraf had blamed exclusively for the resistance, the militants were nonchalant: we will let you know if we find any! The financial compensation demanded by the Taliban for loss of property and life has not been revealed, but some officials have remarked that it is "astronomical". In turn they promised to cease their attacks on civil and military installations, and give the army a safe passage out.
While the army has extricated itself, the locals have been left to pay the price. The militants have closed girl's schools and are enforcing harsh Sharia laws in all of Waziristan, both North and South. Barbers have been told "you shave, you die". Taliban vigilante groups patrol the streets of Miramshah. They check such things as the length of beards, whether the "shalwars" are worn at an appropriate height above the ankles, and attendance of individuals in the mosques.
And then there is Balochistan. Eight years ago when the army seized power, there was no visible separatist movement in Balochistan, which makes nearly 44% of Pakistan's land mass and is the repository of its gas and oil. Now there is a full blown insurgency built upon Baloch grievances, most of which arise from a perception of being ruled from Islamabad and of being denied a fair share of the benefits of the natural resources extracted from their land.
The army has spurned negotiations. Force is the only answer: "They won't know what hit them", boasted Musharraf, after threatening to crush the insurgency. The Army has used everything it can, including its American supplied F-16 jet fighters. The crisis worsened when the charismatic 80-year old Baloch chieftain and former governor of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, was killed by army bombs. Musharraf outraged the Baloch by calling it "a great victory". Reconciliation in Balochistan now seems, at best, a distant dream.
Musharraf and his generals are determined to stay in power. They will protect the source of their power - the army. They will accommodate those they must - the Americans. They will pander to the mullahs. They will crush those who threaten their power and privilege, and ignore the rest. No price is too high for them. They are the reason Pakistan fails.

The author teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. This article was published on the anniversary of the coup.

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DefenseNews.com, October 10, 2006

Former Indian Defense Minister Charged in Israeli Missile Deal Scandal

by Vivek Raghuvanshi, New Delhi

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has accused the former defense minister, George Fernandes, and other current and former officials of accepting kickbacks in exchange for lobbying for India to buy seven Barak missile systems from an Israeli company in 2000.
Besides Fernandes, former Indian Navy chief Adm. Sushil Kumar and Fernandes associate Jaya Jaitley, leader of India’s opposition Samata Party, are named in the CBI’s First Information Report filed Oct. 10 in a designated court here.
“Besides Fernandes, Jaitley and … Kumar, we have also charged Samata Party treasurer R.K. Jain and a defense agent with corruption and criminal conspiracy,” a senior CBI official told Agence France-Presse.
The CBI alleges in its report that Kumar “colluded with other accused to put up a note” to Fernandes to import the Barak systems. Fernandes “not only approved the proposal but tried to get it approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security,” the report states.
Fernandes rejected the charges against him. “In so far as Barak is concerned, if they have to make any charge, then it should start with the president, who first called for [the missile system], asked for it before I went into the government,” he said.
Defence Ministry spokesman Sithanshu Kar told DefenseNews.com the ministry will evaluate the CBI’s report.
Asked if the ministry would blacklist Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), which supplied the Barak missiles, Kar said a decision will be taken only after evaluating the report.
IAI was awarded the contract in October 2000. Each Barak missile system costs around $40 million, and the Indian Navy has seven such systems, including the system mounted on the Navy’s aircraft carrier, INS Viraat. In January, the Indian government’s Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Hyderabad, and IAI agreed to jointly develop and produce a long-range Barak air defense system to meet both countries’ military requirements.
Following a massive arms kickbacks scandal in the mid-1980s, a clause was put in all Indian government defence deals stating a company could be blacklisted and contracts cancelled if it pays middlemen.
After coming into power in 2005, the ruling United Progressive Alliance government blacklisted Denel, alleging the South African company had paid a British firm, Varas Associates, to bribe Indian officials to buy $3.9 million in anti-materiel rifles from Denel during Fernandes’ tenure.
The South African firm denies it violated any Indian laws. Denel was also bidding to set up an ordnance factory in India’s Bihar state and to sell the country artillery guns worth $1.23 billion. But the company can deal with India only after it is cleared by the CBI of the bribery charges.

Agence-France Presse contributed to this report from New Delhi.

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The Hindu, October 10, 2006

North Korea conducts nuclear test

SINGAPORE: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) declared that it "successfully conducted an underground nuclear [weapon] test under secure conditions" on Monday. North Korea's triumphal statement sparked an instant wave of international concern and opposition. The test produced political shock waves across East Asia, where China and South Korea were engaged, along with Japan, in preventing the DPRK from crossing the nuclear Rubicon. Its neighbours, notably South Korea and Japan, reckoned that the test was carried out at 10.36 a.m. local time (01.36 GMT). The seismic intensity was assessed at 3 to 4 on the Richter scale. Japan said it was assessing the "scientific" implications of the "small experiment." China led the international community in calling for consultations and dialogue. Its Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the DPRK "outrageously conducted a nuclear test in defiance of unanimous opposition from the international community." Voicing "firm opposition to the test," the statement emphasised Beijing's "unswerving and consistent position" of enabling the Korean peninsula to remain free of nuclear weapons. China "strongly" demanded that the DPRK abide by its commitment against nuclear proliferation and "halt all the activities that will possibly lead to the further deterioration of the situation." It also demanded that the DPRK "return" once again to "the track of the six-party talks." The parties are the DPRK, the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan. Japanese spokesman Tomohiko Taniguchi told The Hindu over telephone from Tokyo that his country would go at "full throttle," in association with the U.S. and China as also South Korea to "contain" the DPRK, which caused a "crisis" now. He said Tokyo was not suggesting non-diplomatic means. The DPRK's ethnic neighbour, South Korea, detected a seismic tremor, described as an "artificial earthquake," of the magnitude of 3.5 to 3.7 on the Richter scale. The area, where the tremor emanated from, was identified as a remote location in the DPRK's North Hamgyeong province. It was reckoned that such a reading was the basis of the DPRK's proclamation of its entry into the Nuclear Club.

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The Hindu, October 10, 2006

India condemns North Korean test

On board Air-India One: Anxious to avoid any possible comparison between North Korea and India as two nuclear-armed countries outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) system, New Delhi on Monday officially accused Pyongyang of violating its "international commitments" and "jeopardising peace, stability and security on the Korean peninsula and in the region" by testing a nuclear weapon. In a brief statement, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman also said the test "highlights the danger of clandestine proliferation," an implicit reference to the nuclear links which have existed in the past between North Korea and Pakistan. Though the North Korean test — with its dramatic implications for international security — is likely to top the agenda during Manmohan Singh's meetings in London and Helsinki this week, some indication of the challenge it poses for Indian diplomacy was provided by the reluctance of the Prime Minister's advisers to elaborate on New Delhi's perspective on the record. Though unstated, the concern is that debate within the United States — and the Nuclear Suppliers Group — on allowing nuclear commerce with India could now become much more contentious. North Korea formally withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and is under no legal obligation to forswear nuclear weapons. As per the procedure specified in Article X of the NPT, a state-party can renounce the treaty if "extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this treaty, have jeopardised the supreme interests of the country." The only requirement is that the country give notice to other member states and the U.N. Security Council three months in advance and include a statement "of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardised its supreme interests." North Korea did this in 1993, only to suspend its withdrawal when the United States entered into an agreement for nuclear cooperation with it soon thereafter. That agreement was terminated in 2002 and in January 2003, Pyongyang declared it was no longer a party to the NPT.

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DNA Idia, October 10, 2006

Defence scams: CBI conducts raids across country

NEW DELHI: After nearly a year's probe into four major defence deals, the CBI on Tuesday conducted searches at nearly four dozen places in five states against arms dealers involved in the purchases made during the tenure of former Defence Minister George Fernandes.
After registering three fresh cases in the designated court last evening, CBI teams swooped down at nearly 50 locations in the national capital, Gurgaon, Sangroor, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune, including offices and residences of the arms dealers, official sources said.
The Khannas -- Vipin, Aditya and Arvind (the Congress MLA from Sangrur in Punjab) -- had allegedly acted as middlemen in a defence deal with South Africa's Denel, the sources said. Aditya Khanna is already facing the heat from the Enforcement Directorate for his alleged role in Iraq's oil-for-food scam.
While there were no arrests so far, the sources did not rule out the possibility.
Sudhir Chowdhury, a leading arms dealer of the country, came under the scanner along with Suresh Nanda, son of former naval chief Admiral S Nanda, as the CBI conducted searches at their premises.
They played an active role in the purchase of the Israeli Barak missile system. India had acquired nine Barak systems for Rs 1,160 crore with 200 missiles worth Rs 350 crore.
CBI had registered a Preliminary Enquiry against "unknown public servants" of the defence ministry and R K Jain (former Samata Party treasurer and an associate of George Fernandes) on October 20 last year.
The office and residence of another arms dealer, M S Sahani, was also searched by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the deal to purchase the Krasnopol terminally guided munitions after the Tehelka expose.
The CBI sources said they would try and ascertain the role of these persons in relation to other cases being probed by the agency.
The CBI has registered nearly a dozen cases on defence deals signed during the previous NDA regime, besides the case related to the supply of anti-material rifles by South Africa's state-owned arms manufacturer Denel.
The agency is also probing allegations of irregularities in the purchase of special ammunition for 155mm howitzers for Rs 166.44 crore, spares for the 155mm guns worth Rs 97.65 crore and special clothing and mountaineering equipment worth Rs 95.15 crore.
Among other deals referred to the CBI were those for acquiring automatic grenade launchers (Rs 52.13 crore), bulletproof jackets (Rs 51.65 crore), multi-purpose boots (Rs 30.37 crore), charging/generating sets (Rs 28.15 crore), sleeping bags (Rs 20.69 crore), surveillance radars (Rs 9.86 crore) and sniper rifles (Rs 9.54 crore).

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Inter Press Service, October 9, 2006

N. Korean Nuke Tests Say World Must Return to Peace Agenda

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Oct 9 (IPS) - North Korea has shocked the world by detonating a nuclear explosion and making good the threat it had held out six days earlier. Pyongyang's action is one more blow to the existing global non-proliferation order and will trigger greater instability in Northeast Asia and in the Asian continent and world as a whole.
Yet, the world would be profoundly mistaken to a make a knee-jerk response to the test by imposing sanctions on North Korea and reiterating the importance of nuclear non-proliferation, while ignoring the critical agenda of nuclear disarmament.
In particular, the Big Powers would commit a blunder if they encourage or allow Japan and South Korea to re-arm by citing a new threat from North Korea and stoking Cold War-style rivalry and an arms race.
The United States must take the lion's share of the blame for the failure of recent efforts to restrain Pyongyang from crossing the nuclear threshold. Complicit in it are two close U.S. allies and North Korea's neighbours, Japan and South Korea.
President George W. Bush has over the past six years torpedoed the reconciliation process between the two Koreas, aggravating their insecurities. In January 2002, he named North Korea as an "Axis of Evil" state and pledged to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
This led North Korea to terminate the 1994 Agreed Framework accord with the United States, under which it had suspended its nuclear activities. Earlier, Washington reneged on its commitment to annually supply North Korea 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil for power generation. It also did not deliver on its promise to build, with Japanese and South Korea's collaboration, light-water nuclear power reactors in North Korea.
In 2003, Pyongyang walked out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), citing security reasons.
After this, the U.S. joined Russia, China, Japan and South Korea in six-party talks with Pyongyang to negotiate nuclear restraint on its part. When these faltered, largely because of Washington's inept diplomacy, the U.S. put North Korea under quarantine.
As North Korea's isolation increased, it flexed its military muscle. It conducted a series of missile test-flights, including seven past July. One of these, of the Taepodong-2 missile, capable of reaching Alaska, reportedly failed. North Korea became more frustrated and restless.
The North Korean regime observed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, premised upon the trumped-up charge that President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Its rulers probably drew the conclusion, attributed originally to India's former Chief of Army Staff General K. Sundarji, that: "one principal lesson of the [first] Gulf War is that, if a state intends to fight the U.S., it should avoid doing so until and unless it possesses nuclear weapons."
Three recent developments seems to have clinched Pyongyang's decision to conduct the nuclear test, and its timing. These include the appointment of Right-wing militarist Shinzo Abe as Japan's Prime Minister, the lead taken by South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-Moon in the race for the election of the United Nations Secretary General, and a contentious remark by China's ambassador to the UN ahead of a Security Council meeting which was expected to issue a strong warning to North Korea against testing.
U.S. envoy John Bolton said last week that while Washington's Western allies were agreed on a stiff warning, he was not sure "what North Korea's protectors on the (Security) Council are going to do." In reply, Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya said: "I'm not sure which country he is referring to, but I think that for bad behaviour in this world no one is going to protect them."
By testing a nuclear weapon, North Korea has posed a serious challenge to the global nuclear order. A cornerstone of this is the NPT, under which the non-nuclear weapons-states (non-NWSs) agree not to make or acquire nuclear weapons and subject themselves to inspections or safeguards under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In return, the NWSs must undertake serious negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide and also offer civilian nuclear technology and materials to the non-NWSs.
However, the NWSs have refused to undertake nuclear restraint and arms reduction, leave alone disarmament. The International Court of Justice ruled in 1996 that they are obliged under international law to completely eliminate nuclear weapons.
North Korea was an NPT signatory, but walked out of the Treaty under Article XI, which permits this with three months' notice.
Earlier, three NPT non-signatory states, Israel, India and Pakistan went nuclear.
The North Korean test will be seen the world over as successful defiance of the U.S. It will be viewed as an object lesson by Iran, which too has said it would consider walking out of the NPT if it is cornered by the Western powers over its nuclear activities. It is certain to encourage, not deter, future breakouts.
There is a strong likelihood that Pyongyang's crossing of the nuclear Rubicon will strengthen forces in Japan which want to rewrite its post-War constitution by allowing the country to build a full-fledged military capability with offensive forces. Under Abe's leadership, Japan will probably consider a radical revision of a principle, which commits it not to "bring in", make or acquire nuclear weapons.
Japan has a stockpile of 40.6 tonnes of plutonium, allegedly for civilian use. This is enough to make 5,000 nuclear weapons. It plans to annually stockpile another 8 tonnes.
Similarly, South Korea might be tempted to develop nuclear weapons in "self-defence". Technically, the two Koreas are still at war although a ceasefire has held between them since 1953. (However, there are occasional skirmishes. On the weekend, South Korean troops fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the border.)
Taiwan too may feel that the North Korean test has strengthened the case for nuclearisation. Any move in that direction is certain to bring about a hostile response from China.
Ironically, tit-for-tat responses by North Korea's neighbours will only spur an arms race. Northeast Asia will get trapped in a "security-insecurity syndrome" in which a state arms itself in the perceived interests of security, but ends up losing it because its adversaries develop superior capabilities.
Such rivalry spells insecurity and instability for all concerned. This climate will encourage other countries too to acquire more lethal weaponry.
Pakistan has had major armaments transactions with North Korea. Its missile programme is based on North Korean designs. These were reportedly traded in exchange for uranium enrichment technology developed by the A. Q. Khan network.
Yet another destabilising factor is the U.S.'s ballistic missile defence (BMD or "Star Wars") programme. One component of it aims to provide a "theatre BMD" shield to Japan and South Korea against possible threats from North Korea and China. Washington's likely response to North Korea's test would be to accelerate work on this.
This is bound to elicit a hostile response from China. Beijing has long regarded the U.S. BMD programme as directed specifically against itself.
A nuclear and missile arms race centred in Northeast Asia, but not confined to it, will make the world a far more dangerous place.
However, such an outcome is not inevitable. It can be averted if the NWSs address one of the root-causes that drive nations to acquire nuclear weapons. This lies in double standards. The NWSs want to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but stiffly oppose fulfilling their part of the global bargain by moving towards their global elimination.
So long as the NWSs treat these terrible mass-destruction weapons as a currency of power, other states too will want to acquire them.
North Korea proves that even a desperately poor, industrially backward and politically isolated country, which has recently suffered from famines, can acquire nuclear weapons if it is determined to do so. The technology is not hard to master.
At least 40 other countries of the world can develop a nuclear capability. Their resolve not to do so will be weakened unless the spread of nuclear weapons and the NWSs' addiction to them are ended.
North Korea's test should shake the NWSs out of their complacency and double standards.

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Ohmynews.com, October 9, 2006

Peace lessons from the North Korean test

Praful Bidwai

How many more nuclear breakouts must the world witness before the nuclear weapons-states (NWSs) give up their atomic addiction and earnestly fulfil their commitment under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to rid the globe of nuclear weapons?
North Korea's test shows that even a small, poor, and economically and politically isolated country, which cannot assuredly feed its people, can make nuclear weapons if it has a tiny reactor or access to crude uranium enrichment technology-and plenty of determination.
Other, more industrialised and technologically advanced, countries too can go nuclear. The science of nuclear fission is more than 60 years old and the technology is relatively simple. Both can be easily accessed.
The critical barrier is not technology, but politics. Generating the political will to stay on this side of the nuclear Rubicon is only partly a function of perceived security threats. In good measure, it also depends on one's faith in the existing global nuclear order and its contribution to world security.
Non-proliferation, or preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, is a cornerstone of this order. At the heart of it is the NPT, which was a two-way bargain. Under it, the non-nuclear weapons-states (non-NWSs) agreed not to make or acquire nuclear weapons and subject themselves to inspections or safeguards under the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In return, the NWSs committed themselves to serious negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide and also offered civilian nuclear technology and materials to the non-NWSs.
However, the NWSs have refused to undertake nuclear restraint and arms reduction, leave alone disarmament. They have grievously damaged and weakened the nuclear order by cheating on their part of the bargain.
Eight years ago, India and Pakistan (and earlier, Israel) blew another hole into that order by conducting nuclear tests. And now, North Korea has further damaged it.
North Korea claims that the tests were a major achievement, a "historic event" and a "great leap forward".
We have heard this before. We heard this in 1998, when India set off five nuclear explosions and Pakistan detonated six bombs, to get even with India's five, plus its 1974 test.
In the Indian case, the decision to test had little to do with security. There was no immediate threat to India's security and certainly no systematic assessment of the strategic environment, and whether it called for a radical break from the long-established policy of keeping the nuclear weapons option open, but not exercising it.
India's decision to cross the nuclear threshold was prestige-driven, not security-driven. Underlying it was a false notion of what brings a nation international respect and a search by the Indian elite for a shortcut to global greatness without addressing the real needs of the people, a majority of them poor.
That made the decision especially deplorable. But even if the Indian decision were based on a security calculus, it would still have been egregiously wrong. The reason is simple: nuclear weapons do not provide genuine long-term security, often not even short-term security.
In theory, they are meant to make a state secure through a "balance of terror", or deterrence. But deterrence is based on false assumption and often breaks down-as happened hundreds of times during the Cold War.
India itself preached this for half-a-century, and termed "deterrence" an abhorrent doctrine. It then turned against its own wisdom in 1998.
Since then, India has got into a fraught strategic equation with Pakistan, which has degraded the security of both. Now, more than a billion people in the subcontinent have become vulnerable to attacks by nuclear-tipped missiles, against which there is no defence-whether military, civilian or medical.
North Korea's rulers are of course not mad rogues, as some Western ideologues claim. But they are not particularly rational in opting for nuclear weapons either. Nuclearisation can only bring North Korea more suspicion, opprobrium and trouble from the world-besides draining its resources.
Both Japan and South Korea will now come under pressure from domestic militarist lobbies to respond by further militarising themselves and developing their own nuclear weapons. This pressure can only have a negative impact on their society and politics.
Japan is already on the way to re-arming itself, and rewriting its pacifist constitution. Under Shinzo Abe, it will be more tempted than ever to develop a nuclear weapons capability. At the end of 2003, Japan had a plutonium stockpile of 40.6 tonnes of plutonium, allegedly for civilian use. This is enough to make 5,000 nuclear weapons. It plans to stockpile a further 8 tonnes a year!
South Korea too might cite an "immediate" threat and "real and present danger" from its Cold War adversary and neighbour-and prepare to go nuclear.
The U.S. might want to deter them in a friendly way by recalling that it offers them a reliable nuclear umbrella and by offering to develop a "theatre ballistic missile defence" (BMD or "Star Wars") shield to Japan and South Korea against possible threats from North Korea and China.
Washington's likely response to North Korea's test would be to accelerate work on this as-yet-unproved technology.
This is bound to elicit a hostile response from China. Beijing believes the U.S. BMD programme is directed specifically against itself.
A nuclear and missile arms race centred in Northeast Asia, but not confined to it, will produce new tensions and insecurities in Northeast Asia and make the world a far more dangerous place than it already is.
If Japan and/or South Korea develop nuclear weapons, that will trigger an arms race, in which all concerned lose and become insecure. In matters nuclear, more isn't better. So Japan's (or South Korea's) capacity to produce many more nuclear weapons than North Korea won't make them more secure.
One more Hiroshima or Nagasaki is one more Hiroshima or Nagasaki too many.
There is a way out. That lies in reforming the global nuclear order by implementing the original bargain on which the NPT was founded. That means the NWSs seriously start discussing disarmament.
Regionally, there can be initiatives to dissuade North Korea from pursuing a nuclear weapons programme by offering security, economic and political incentives. Such arrangements can over time lead to the creation of a Northeast Asia nuclear weapons-free zone which addresses the security concerns of Japan and the two Koreas. This is a long-standing demand of many Asia-Pacific peace groups.
A combination of regional and global nuclear restraint and disarmament measures is in order-including de-alerting of nuclear weapons, separating of nuclear warheads form delivery vehicles, and phased destruction of nuclear armaments. Such steps are not unrealistic.
What is needed is the political will and the imagination to think of peace and security boldly and in moral, rational and non-military terms.

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Economic and Political Weekly, October 7, 2006

Attack on India's Parliament: Last Chance To Know What Really Happened

The attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001 was a major event in contemporary India. As the judicial procedure into this case nears its end, with Mohammed Afzal to be hanged on October 20, our effort to get at the truth as to what really happened is about to be scuttled. Who attacked Parliament and what was the conspiracy? On what basis did the NDA government take the country close to a nuclear war? What was the role of the State Task Force (J and K) on surrendered militants? What was the role of the Special Cell of Delhi Police in conducting the case?

by Nirmalangshu Mukherji

A sessions court in Delhi has announced that Mohammed Afzal, sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India on August 4, 2005, is to be hanged on October 20, 2006. While the judicial procedure is nearing its end in the Parliament attack case, have we understood one of the major events of contemporary India? More importantly, will the said completion of the judicial process in fact scuttle our effort at understanding the event?

Limits of Judiciary
The questions just asked presuppose that the judgment of the Supreme Court failed to provide the required understanding. Why? As a court of law, it is bound by a structure of responsibilities. In the present case, the court was faced with four appeals: two by the Delhi Police and one each by Afzal and Shaukat. To that end, it examined the evidence produced before the trial court and the subsequent judgments by the trial court and the high court. The evidence was produced by an authorised investigating agency, namely, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police, with its ACP Rajbir Singh as the investigating officer. The evidence was presented in the trial court with supporting materials and witnesses. Most of the evidence, especially in Afzal's case, went unchallenged. The trial court provided Afzal with an accredited lawyer who chose to remain largely inactive. In fairness, we must note that whenever the defence - especially Gilani's and Shaukat's eminent team of lawyers - was able to question some evidence successfully, the high court and the Supreme Court did take notice of that and set the evidence aside. This is particularly true of the confessions obtained from Afzal and Shaukat; setting them aside created a huge dent in the case, as the Supreme Court noted. The high court in fact reprimanded the police in fairly strong terms for fabricating the arrest memos and for keeping people under illegal confinement. In each case, Gilani's defence team successfully produced counter-evidence. As for the overwhelming evidence produced against Afzal, almost nothing was challenged at the trial court, making the task virtually insurmountable for his defence in the appeal courts. Looking at this evidence, therefore, the Supreme Court was obliged to conclude that Afzal was guilty of aiding and abetting the attackers.
To emphasise, although each of these have been fully documented (December 13: Terror over Democracy, 2005 and reports by PUDR) the Supreme Court was not seized of the role of the media in fanning pre-trial hysteria, the notorious character of the investigating agency, the mindset of the trial judge, and the role of Afzal's trial lawyer. We have shown earlier (EPW, September 17, 2005) how these factors might have contaminated the evidence against Afzal and its judicial examination. By design, the limited legal window through which the court examined the In particular, the court was not endowed with the task of explaining the attack. Nonetheless, as noted, when presented with credible arguments by the defence, the court did take the bold step to set aside the confessions. Since the confessions carried the only story of the conspiracy to attack the Parliament, the court's story of the attack was swift and short. What we learn from the judgment is that five persons with sundry names attacked the Parliament, killed some people, and died. And Mohammed Afzal aided these attackers. Period.

Voices
The wider issues that surround the case - including the role, if any, of Mohammed Afzal in it - can then be addressed in forums other than a court of law. A large number of writers, academicians and lawyers have raised a number of grave issues concerning the Parliament attack case to which the judgment of the court provided no answers. Importantly, as we will sample below, many of these concerns were raised while the court deliberated on the case, and the concerns continued even after the judgment was delivered. What are these issues? While the hearing in the court was nearing its end, lawyer Usha Ramanathan wrote (Frontline, May 6, 2005), "the court, will not, and is not expected to, concern itself with aspects that are not directly relevant to the case of the accused before it. So, many questions will inevitably, and predictably, remain uninvestigated in the court's docket." One of the questions Ramanathan asked was: "Was it an act of war? Or was it a terrorist act? Or perhaps a protest employing extremist methods? We don't know. But, on the presumption that it was an act of war, the troops were massed along the border, Indian and Pakistani soldiers glowered at each other for nearly a year, enormous resources were sunk into aggressive posturing, soldiers lost their lives, over a hundred children reportedly fell prey to land mines, and many farmers along this mined, potential battlefield were left without a livelihood."
Noting that Mohammed Afzal, the prime accused, was a surrendered militant in regular contact with the State Task Force (STF) in Kashmir, Ramanathan observed, "a surrendered militant is no longer a militant but one who has chosen to return. The surrendered militant is in the uneasy zone where he is suspect on both sides of the divide. The militants see in him a turncoat. The security forces and the Special Task Force (STF) hold him in their thrall, while viewing him constantly with suspicion." Specifically, "If a person under the watchful eye of the STF could be part of a conspiracy to wage war against the state, how can anything less than a public inquiry do? For this is not about the guilt or innocence of one man, but about how a system works and what it means, to democracy, sovereignty and the security of the state."
Yet, the "astonishing fact", Ramanathan suggested, was that "there has never been a public inquiry into the attack on Parliament: not by a parliamentary committee, not by the media, not an expanded search by the police, nor even a commission of inquiry. When we picture the parliamentarians huddled inside Parliament as the sounds from the battleground outside told them of their narrow escape, it is difficult to understand why no one, not in the ruling coalition, not in the opposition, not in the secretariat of Parliament, thought there should be an immediate and deep-reaching inquiry." Elsewhere (The Book Review, May 5, 2005), Ramanathan wrote, "the only inquiry of which the public has knowledge has been translated into criminal proceedings in the court. The microscopic nature of a trial in court, however, means that it is only the accused whose conduct will be interrogated and judged." About the failure of the media to initiate a deep-reaching inquiry, Gouri Chatterjee wrote (The Telegraph, June 30, 2005), "the media's unquestioning acceptance of whatever the police fed them, no, directed them to say, their complicity in the government's scheme of things are downright embarrassing". Rajat Roy (Anandabazar Patrika, July 16, 2005) illustrated the complicity of the media with the police by recounting the event of Afzal's forced confession before the media. Subhendu Dasgupta (EPW, July 22, 2006) summed up the complicity as follows: "The truth that the media presented was incomplete, partial, truncated, engineered and designed, and the judgment was made on the basis of this truth. The media came to its judgment before the judicial process started. The administrative truth was passed on to the media; the media took the official truth and transformed it into 'media truth'." Notice that Dasgupta maintained this nearly one year after the judgment of the Supreme Court. Commenting on the entire episode, Gouri Chatterjee observed that "the greater tragedy is, we are condemned to repeat all this the next time round too". One year after the judgment, Sukumar Muralidharan expanded on these themes (Biblio, September-October 2005). "The December 13 event", Muralidharan observed, "proved the pivot from which momentous consequences followed. These involved issues of war and peace, the security and well-being of the peoples of India and Pakistan, and the posture that national governments in the two countries would adopt towards the global struggle being waged between what was 'civilisation' and its supposed antithesis." Needless to say, none of these momentous issues can be addressed without ascertaining the facts surrounding the event. More specifically, "a well-informed citizenry obviously owes itself the duty of unravelling the facts behind the attack on a central institution of its democracy. And an indispensable part of the process of ascertaining facts would be to establish the motivations that led the Delhi Police into its sordid saga of fabrication." After describing Afzal's predicaments as a surrendered militant, Muralidharan observed, "any Indian citizen with a basic level of civic involvement would be assailed by a number of questions if she were to take the statements by Afzal in their entirety". "Indeed", Muralidharan went on to observe, "the conclusions that any observer who has not surrendered his critical faculties to the cult of the nation state would be impelled to" are "fraught with immensely disturbing consequences for the functioning of the Indian state and, hence, for the health of Indian democracy", quoting from a recent book on the topic.

Appeal for Inquiry
Going beyond printed words in the margins of the media, a group of citizens consisting of writers, academicians, lawyers, and journalists have publicly appealed for a parliamentary inquiry into the entire episode. A committee chaired by Nirmala Deshpande with Mahasweta Devi, Rajni Kothari, Prabhat Patnaik, Ashish Nandy, Prashant Bhushan, Sumanta Banerjee, Mihir Desai, and others as members, held a press conference within a week of the judgment by the Supreme Court. In its press statement the committee noted, "Afzal has been convicted of conspiracy primarily on the basis of statements of police witnesses and seizures of materials from him shown by the police, which went unrebutted during trial, because Afzal was practically unrepresented in the trial. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the court has acquitted three of the four persons charged of conspiracy and has held that the manner and circumstances in which the confessions were obtained, makes them unreliable. However, it is only on the basis of these unreliable confessions that the then government immediately committed the country to a full-scale war mobilisation against Pakistan with the possibility that it might have escalated to a nuclear war. The mobilisation was used by the NDA government for political purposes. POTA was immediately enacted, and anti-Pakistan as well as communal feelings were whipped up in the war hysteria which was drummed up taking advantage of the attack on Parliament." Soon after, the committee appealed to the members of Parliament in the following words, with supporting documentation:
Members of the Committee as well as reputed human rights organisations have been raising serious questions on the conduct of the previous NDA government, especially the functioning of the investigating agencies, in the Parliament attack case. In the light of the Supreme Court judgment of August 4, 2005, we wish to draw your attention to these apprehensions.

(1) The NDA government initiated a full-scale mobilisation for war against Pakistan, saying that the terrorists were Pakistanis sponsored by the Pakistan government. The war-effort, which was sustained for nearly a year, had very serious consequences. We have mentioned them in our public appeal located at Appendix 1. The only evidence of terrorist conspiracy originating from Pakistan is Mohammed Afzal's confessional statement. The Supreme Court has held that the confession is unreliable. With the confession set aside, we do not know who attacked Parliament and what was the conspiracy.

(2) Mohammed Afzal, the only person found guilty of conspiracy by the Apex Court, is a surrendered militant, who was not only supposed to report regularly to the Special Task Force of J and K, but was also under their surveillance. How could such a person mastermind and execute such a complex conspiracy? How could a terrorist organisation rely upon such a person as the principal link for their operation? On whose behest was he acting? Is there some credibility to Afzal's statement, noted at Appendix 2, that both the leader of the attack, Mohammed, and that one of the masterminds in Kashmir, Tariq actually belonged to the Special Task Force? What is the significance of the press report that 4 terrorists including one Hamza - the same name as one of the terrorists killed in the Parliament attack and supposedly identified by Afzal - had been arrested by the Thane police in November 2000 and handed over to the J and K police for further investigation? The press report is located at Appendix 3. It will be a travesty of justice to hang Mohammed Afzal without ascertaining answers to these questions.

(3) With the acquittal of three out of four persons from the charge of conspiracy, it is clear that the investigating agency tried to frame at least three innocent persons. The high court had found the agency guilty of producing false arrest memos, doctoring telephone conversations, and illegal confinement of people to force them to sign blank papers. It is also clear that false confessions were extracted by torture.
In the absence of alternative explanations, it seems that the NDA government was massively fooled by its own police. The country must learn the truth behind the attacks. Responsibility must be fixed for those guilty of negligence, concoction of evidence, and propagation of deliberate falsehood. Above all, those who almost took the country to war in such a reckless manner must be made accountable. To that end, the Committee has already issued an appeal for Parliamentary inquiry. Some press coverage of the appeal is shown at Appendix 4. There have been other recent appeals for a public inquiry on the case, shown at Appendix 5. We urge you to institute a Parliamentary inquiry at least on the following questions:
(1) Who attacked Parliament and what was the conspiracy?
(2) On what basis did the NDA government take the country close to a nuclear war?
(3) What was the role of the State Task Force (J and K) on surrendered militants?
(4) What was the role of the Special Cell of Delhi Police in conducting the case?
(5) What institutional and legal changes are required to prevent a government from going to war unilaterally without the consent of Parliament as in this case?

The political system has failed to take the steps to answer the grave questions raised at length by eminent citizens. And the time is running out for initiating any fruitful inquiry on these questions. From what we can see through the restricted legal window of the Supreme Court, just six persons are in view, five attackers and Mohammed Afzal, as noted. Since the attackers died on the spot, Mohammed Afzal is the only living soul who, according to the Supreme Court, might know something of what really happened. Mohammed Afzal has not been heard yet (Nandita Haksar, Indian Express, September 30, 2006).

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DefenseNews.com, October 6, 2006

France Makes Offer To Supply India With Fighters

by Vivek Raghuvanshi, New Delhi

France has made a new offer to supply India with 20 Rafale multirole combat fighters — enough for one squadron — that are currently flying with the French Air Force.
A visiting team from the French Ministry of Defense (MoD) made the offer here Oct. 6 in separate briefings with the Indian Air Force’s commander, Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi, and Indian Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt.
The new French offer is a result of India’s request to buy Mirage-2000H aircraft from the French Air Force inventory, a senior French diplomat here said. During their briefings, he said, the French MoD team said France cannot offer India any used Mirage-2000Hs immediately because the aircraftfirst must be decommissioned, a lengthy procedure.
“In order to fill up the depleting inventory of combat plates with the Indian Air Force, the Indian government should buy used Rafale aircraft as an interim measure, and thereafter France will be able to supply around 40 Mirage-2000H aircraft by 2012,” the diplomat said.
However, a senior Indian Defence Ministry official said the new French offer “has come to us all of a sudden, and we will take time to review the proposal. However, India is very keen to purchase used Mirage 2000H aircraft from France.”
The same ministry official said French officials confirmed that Paris has begun a dialogue with Qatar — at the behest of India’s Defence Ministry — to purchase 12 used Qatari Mirage 2000-5 aircraft, which in turn would be sold to India. But “the French government has not given us any time commitment for deliveries of the used planes,” he added.
That proposed deal, along with the possible supply of used French Air Force Mirage 2000-H aircraft, is part of an understanding reached during the Sept. 3-5 visit to Paris of Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Last year, India negotiated with Qatar to buy that country’s Mirage 2000-5 aircraft directly, but the negotiations collapsed when the governments couldn’t agree on a price.
The Indian Air Force also wants 52 of its Mirage 2000-H aircraft, which are five years overdue for midlife upgrades, to be upgraded to the Mirage 2000-9 standard.
“Once the procurement of the 12 Mirage 2000-5 and the 40 used Mirage 2000-H aircraft is finalized, then the Indian Air Force would ask Dassault International, the [original equipment manufacturer] of the Mirage aircraft, to upgrade” the Qatari aircraft and six Indian Mirage-2000-Hs to the -2000-9 standard, an Indian Air Force official said.
The upgraded planes would be equipped with Israeli avionics, electronic warfare systems and Russian armaments, he added. Thereafter, India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. would upgrade the remaining Mirage aircraft in Bangalore with technical help from Dassault, the Air Force official said.

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Inter Press Service, October 4, 2006

Musharraf's Memoir Sets Cats Among Pigeons

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Oct 4 (IPS) - By launching his memoir amidst a two week-long high-powered publicity blitz across three continents, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has set a cat, or rather several cats, among the pigeons.
He has raked up issues long considered settled, made abrasive or disparaging remarks about his former colleagues, superiors, allies and friends, claimed credit for Pakistan's unique and irreplaceable role in the United States-led 'global war on terror', and demanded that the world must pay attention to Pakistan's concerns and respect it as a 'responsible' nuclear state despite the nuclear blackmarket or 'Wal-Mart' run by the A.Q. Khan network.
Musharraf has thus, expectedly, generated controversy and contention with the volume 'In The Line of Fire'. He has attracted more anger, resentment and hostility than sympathy, support or affection. But he has also thrown up challenges, which neither South Asian policy-makers nor world leaders can ignore.
Musharraf's foremost priority in the book is to project himself as an indispensable Western ally in the war against terrorism, especially terrorism related to extremist Islam. As he told BBC Radio last week, "you [the West] will be brought down to your knees if, Pakistan doesn't cooperate with youà If we were not with you, you would not manage anythingà If the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services-Intelligence Agency) is not with you, you will fail."
Musharraf also presents himself as a bulwark of moderation, determined to wean Pakistan away from all forms of religious intolerance and fundamentalism. In that role too, he claims he is irreplaceable.
The book's content and composition reflect Musharraf's purposes and priorities. The part devoted to "The War on Terror" occupies 82 pages, while the entire section on his pre-coup army career claims 39 pages. The highly controversial chapter on the 1999 Kargil conflict with India across the Line of Control in Kashmir is only 12 pages long.
The text totally masks Musharraf's identity as a general. Of the 32 post-1999 coup photographs of Musharraf in the book's 16-page picture folio, only five show him in uniform.
The impact of Musharraf's book stands greatly magnified by the talks, interviews, panel discussions, press conferences and other media events organised around it.
Perhaps never before has a head of state published his or her memoir while still in service, and promoted it at state expense in such an extravagant way. Many people in Pakistan have objected to Musharraf using in the book privileged information available to him as head of both state and government. The government also bore the bulk of the expenses of his fortnight-long foreign tour, with a 70-strong entourage.
Many South Asian analysts see the timing of book's publication as related to Musharraf's likely plans for presidential elections in Pakistan, due next year under a Supreme Court-stipulated deadline.
Says Kamal Mitra Chenoy, from the School of International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University: "It's highly probable that Musharraf will contest the elections."
"But there may be a deeper game", adds Chenoy. "By telling the West that he is indispensable, he is creating the ground for tolerance of a certain level of rigging or manipulation in the elections. He would like the United States, which has long indulged him, to turn a blind eye to electoral malpractices so that a reliable ally will stay in power in a 'sensitive country'."
Whatever the links between the book and Musharraf's plans, each major contention or "disclosure" in it has been contradicted by those involved in events pertaining to them.
- Musharraf claims that the Kargil operation was a great "victory" for Pakistan and "a landmark in the history" of its army. But Pakistan earned international reprimand for crossing the Line of Control. Eventually, under U.S. pressure, it had to withdraw from all the territory it had seized. Hundreds of lives were lost. The claims vary between 725 and 2,700 (the latter according to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif).
- Musharraf claims that he had kept Sharif in the picture as regards the Kargil intrusion plan and preparations. This is contradicted not just by Sharif, but by former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz too.
- Musharraf says that former U.S. official Richard Armitage told the ISI chief in September 2001 that if Pakistan does not join America's war on terror, the U.S. would bomb it "back to the Stone Age!" That was the "strong" message Bush wanted delivered. Bush expressed surprise over this. Armitage has totally denied it. The former ISI chief has been incommunicado.
- Musharraf claims that the Pakistan government had no inkling of the strength and ramifications of the A.Q. Khan network. In particular, it knew nothing about shipments of uranium centrifuges and other components and designs from Khan laboratories. However, it is impossible for Khan to have transferred 18 tonnes of equipment from high-security premises to the airport and then out of Pakistan without the army's knowledge and approval.
''The General may have shifted stance and even made a U-turn on some issues like the Taliban-al-Qaeda", says Chenoy. "But he did so only under pressure, because he had no choice. In turn, he is now mounting pressure on the West."
At all probability, Musharraf deliberately exaggerated the threat communicated by Armitage. But his purpose was to remind Bush of the assurances reportedly given to Musharraf in 2001 in respect of Afghanistan and India. Musharraf was apparently told that Washington would help contain the Northern Alliance and accommodate more Pushtuns in the government; also, it would help in getting India to discuss Kashmir.
Musharraf has been pressing for accommodating what he calls "moderate Taliban". He has just reached a deal with pro-Taliban tribal leaders in the North Waziristan agency on the Afghanistan border.
This deal will create a virtual sanctuary for the al-Qaeda-Taliban and is viewed by many in Washington with suspicion. But Musharraf appears to have won Bush's backing for it.
The challenge the West faces is how to keep Musharraf on board without letting him appease the Taliban and other extremists for short-term reasons. The Anglo-American forces in Afghanistan are too exhausted to fight. NATO forces are replacing them, but their strength seems inadequate to stop the Taliban's growing resurgence.
Musharraf claims to be a bulwark of moderation, but his reforms against extremist and obscurantist practices have been half-hearted. He banned terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba. But he has not taken action against their revival through false identities like Markaz-ud-Dawa.
How far, and by what means the U.S. can push Pakistan towards a moderate Islamic society remains unclear. Any overt pressure will provoke a hostile popular response. Covert, subtle, pressure may not work.
India too faces a challenge. On the one hand, New Delhi is committed to the bilateral dialogue process with Islamabad launched in January 2004. One the other, it seriously suspects that Pakistani secret agencies, or some elements in them, have been involved in recent terrorist incidents in India, including the Varanasi and Mumbai bombings.
Musharraf's boastful claims about Kargil, in particular his view that no progress in the bilateral dialogue could have taken place without Kargil, have upset many Indian policy-makers and ûshapers. Some say he cannot be trusted as a reliable dialogue partner.
This lobby's weight has risen following last week's announcement by the Mumbai police that 11 Pakistanis who entered India committed the July blasts in Mumbai.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh still remains inclined to take Musharraf at face value on the agreement to create a "joint mechanism" on terrorism, which the two announced at Havana last fortnight.
Although Pakistan says that so suspects will be arrested and handed over to India under the "joint mechanism", its position may change if India presents comprehensive and unimpeachable evidence of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai blasts.



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