In Uri's wake, Pak nukes under scrutiny

US Wants Cap On N-Programme, Obama Says End Proxy Wars

Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme came under renewed scrutiny and pressure from the US, Japan, and other aid-givers this week, even as the country's nervous leaders rattled their atomic arsenal, fearing retribution from India for the Uri attack.

Word that Washington is asking Islamabad to cap the programme came from both Pakistani and US officials amid Islamabad's rising tensions with New Delhi and deteriorating relations with other Saarc nations. While US officials were circumspect, saying secretary of state John Kerry “stressed the need for restraint“, officials from Pakistan bluntly said “it had been conveyed to the US secretary of state that the proposals expected from Pakistan should also be implemented by India“.

“Pakistan's nuclear programme cannot be limited,“ the Pakistani media quoted the country's envoy to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, as saying at a briefing where Indian journalists were kept out. “The world should first put an end to nuclear activities undertaken by India,“ she reportedly added.

The defiance came even as Pakistan's defence minister Khawaja Asif and top generals rattled their nuclear weapons in a familiar show of bra vado to warn off retaliation from India for the Uri attack, which New Delhi says were launched from Pakistan. It renewed the long-running debate about Pakistan using its nuclear cover to initiate terror strikes on India, and the pressure on New Delhi to call Islamabad's bluff.

Separately, Pakistan is al so using the threat of an unbridled expansion of its nuclear programme to seek a berth in Nuclear Suppliers Group, with a section of US domain experts arguing that membership may be one way to contain a runaway expansion. Others caution that American permissiveness is precisely what allowed Pakistan to come to this stage.

But recent developments, including North Korea's ramped up nuclear programme, and Pakistan's own growing reputation as a terrorist hub on top of its proliferation record, are putting a crimp on Islamabad's effort to seek the kind of legitimacy India's nuclear programme has.

On Tuesday , Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif sought Japan's support for NSG membership, even though Pakistan has posed an existential danger to Japan by proliferating nuclear technology to North Korea.He was reportedly rebuffed, even though Sharif reportedly told Japan PM Shinzo Abe that Islamabad “strongly condemns the recent nuclear tests conducted by North Korea“.

The idea that Pakistan has gotten away with sponsorship of terrorism and nuclear proliferation for so long is in itself quite astonishing, but those days may be coming to an end, with even US lawmakers now saying Islamabad has overplayed its cards (see accompanying copy , `US bill...').

In fact, Pakistan's parlous economic condition, with steep decline in its two principal sources of revenue -remittance and exports -has put the country in a particularly vulnerable spot as US, Japan, South Korea, and EU start to mount pressure.Pakistan's response has been to run to China, Turkey , Russia, and Saudi Arabia, which, in the eyes of many Pakistani fantasists, are Islamabad's new allies because India has gotten close to US, Japan, and EU nations, among others.

In New York, Pakistan's efforts to highlight the Kashmir issue by raising the nuclear stakes on the back of the tensions over the Uri attack have essentially come to nought. The global community has either ignored it, or lectured Pakistan not to provoke a confrontation.

On Tuesday , President Obama asked nations engaged in “proxy wars“ to end them, warning that if communities are not allowed to co-exist, the “embers of extremism will continue to burn“ causing sufferings to countless human beings and export of extremism overseas. Although he did not name Pakistan, it ticked all the boxes he mentioned.

(TOI)