Islamic bomb in cold storage

Press, 7 January 1983, Page 10

Islamic bomb in cold storage

From

SHYAM BHATIA,

l, in Islamabad

Pakistan has postponed indefinitely all plans for carrying out an underground nuclear test. United States warnings that such a test would have serious consequences for Pakistan were repeated to President Zia during his visit to the United States in November.

A change of emphasis has now become apparent in the projection of Pakistan's nuclear policies. According to highly placed sources in Islamabad, President Zia told his American hosts he had no plans for carrying out a nuclear test. He also said he did not distinguish between so-called peaceful nuclear explosives and nuclear bombs. “The Americans told him in no uncertain terms what he stood to lose if he went nuclear,” one Western ambassador in Islamabad said.

A year ago President Zia’s then Foreign Minister, Aga Shahi, said: “We make a distinction between an explosion and weapons. We do not rule out the possibility of a detonation if it is necessary for our programme.” President Zia’s pledge does not prevent continuing research and development, taking Pakistan right up to the brink of weapons-making capability but stopping short of a test. Nor will there be any reining-in of the country’s own Dr Strangelove, metallurgist Dr Abdel Qader Khan, Dr Khan, the author of abusive letters to Western journalists who monitor his research, is a near legendary figure in Pakistan. He can occasionally be spotted hunched in the back seat of his Toyota, police cars in front and behind, as he races between his Islamabad home and the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant nearing completion outside Rawalpindi. Security at Kahuta and at the nearby Pakistan Institute of Science and Technology, the site for a plutonium reprocessing plant, remains very tight. Both sites are ringed by French surface-to-air missiles and, after the recent scare of an Indian pre-emptive strike,

Chinese-built F-6 jets belonging to the Pakistan Air Force have resumed their regular patrols.

Pakistan’s interest in nuclear weapons technology was first publicly voiced in May, 1974, soon after India tested a “peaceful” nuclear device. Pakistan’s Prime Minister at the time, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, vowed his countrymen would “eat grass” if necessary to match the Indian effort. He was not taken seriously because Pakistan, like India, is one of the poorest countries in the world. Nor, unlike India, did it have the industrial infrastructure to develop a serious nuclear capability. The picture changed in 1979 with the discovery of a large clandestine effort by the Pakistan Government to procure the necessary equipment to build a uranium centrifuge enrichment plant at Kahuta. Highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, such as plutonium 239, is necessary for making atomic bombs. Until last year all the signs pointed to an imminent Pakistani nuclear test, either relying on uranium from Kahuta or plutonium diverted from the Canadian-built nuclear power reactor, Kanupp, near Karachi. Last summer Western intelligence experts also noted the digging of an underground tunnel in the Chagmai hills of Baluchistan — a possible site for an underground nuclear test — and the purchase of specialised equipment, including a particular type of transmission cable as well as detonating “lenses” that all add up to a forthcoming nuclear test. Pakistan’s plans must be also assessed in the light of reports that China last year sold sensitive nuclear materials — enriched uranium — to Islamabad. The reports originate from Japanese scientists who were the first to realise that China was prepared to sell enriched uranium in exchange for hard currency.

Pakistan and South Africa were among the countries known to have shown some interest.

Peking has since denied selling Pakistws Anything in the

nuclear field that could be classified as sensitive. Nevertheless, there does exist a basis for a nuclear exchange deal between the two countries. Chinese scientists are interested in the centrifuge enrichment process that their Pakistani counterparts, using information obtained from the Netherlands, are trying to develop at home in Kahuta. President Zia, meanwhile, has cultivated a studied lack of interest in nuclear testing. His apparent change of heart, first noticed earlier last year and strenuously displayed last month in Washington, is explicable for the most part in terms of keeping Washington happy. At stake is more than three billion dollars in direct military aid as well as the delivery of 40 F-16 fighters, the first of which begin arriving in Pakistan later this year. Non-mili-tary aid from Washington, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is also in the pipeline. Given the Parlous state of the Pakistan economy, the continuing Soviet military presence in neighbouring Afghanistan, and the lack of domestic popular support for President Zia, the American connection seems too valuable to be cut.

At least as important a disincentive for Pakistan going nuclear has been the fear of what India might do in return. More than a year ago Mrs Indira Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, told Parliament that India “would respond in an appropriate way” if Pakistan went nuclear. There was more to the rhetoric than wishful thinking. If American intelligence reports are correct, Mrs Gandhi seriously contemplated a preemptive strike against Pakistani nuclear targets last year. She held back, according to a pre-Christmas report in the “Washington Post,” only out of fear that Pakistan would retaliate and inflict equal damage on Indian nuclear centres. Islamabad worries endlessly about the threat from India. Pakistan’s intelligence service may independently have re-

ported rumoured Indian plans for pre-emptive action. Concern about Indian tactics is thought to explain the strange dawn visit last September by Dr Munir Ahmed Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, to the hotel room of his Indian colleague, Dr Raja Ramanna. Both men were in Vienna attending the annual meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Dr Ramanna, a hawk in the Indian science establishment, was awakened early in the morning by a knock at his bedroom door. His visitor was Dr Khan with an “urgent message” for Mrs Gandhi. “Please tell Mrs Gandhi,” Dr Khan is reported to have said, “that all we want is peace.” Dr Ramanna. dumbfounded, agreed to pass on the message, although as he later told colleagues the same message could have been better sent through political channels. Indian officials have angrily dismissed all suggestions of a planned pre-emptive strike against Pakistan. There has been no reaction, however, to persistent reports that India and Israel have held secret discussions about Pakistan’s nuclear progress. Israel fears its Arab enemies will use the lever of Islam to buy nuclear secrets from Pakistan.

Last November a Right-wing member of the Indian Parliament, Subranianiam Swamy, returned from a visit to Jerusalem and revealed for the first time details of secret contacts between Indian and Israeli politicians. Mr Swamy’s account of his trip was published in the Indian magazine, “Sunday.” What he left out was the conversation he had with Israeli defence experts. "Would you,” Mr Swamy asked, “consider a pre-emptive strike against Pakistani nuclear targets just as you did in Baghdad?”

“Yes.” came the reply, “if you give us refuelling facilities at your forward air base in Jamnagar.” (South of the Pakistan border). Copyright, London Observer Service.