Nuclear arms for India advocated

Press, 12 May 1987, Page 9

Nuclear arms for India advocated

India should become nuclear-armed to ensure it was not intimidated by its nuclear-capable neighbours, a visiting Indian defence expert said in Christchurch yesterday. India might be nucleararmed within the next two years, said the director of India’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, Mr K. Subrahmanyam. “It has the capability of becoming nuclear-armed in a very short time, but it has exercised restraint until now.”

Mr Subrahmanyam is in New Zealand to attend the Seventh New Zealand International Conference on Asian Studies in Auckland and to present papers on Indian perspectives on nuclear weapons. Until recently the Indian Government’s policy was not to have a nuclear arsenal, but it had been forced to review that stance because of Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The possible threat that Pakistan and China’s weapons would be used

was justification for Indian armament, said Mr Subrahmanyam. Although Pakistan was not a democracy, the United States had “already given the go-ahead” to its nuclear-arms buildup, he said, in return for its support of the Afghanistan insurgents. Pakistan also supported the United States West Asian policies. “Is the United States

interested in promoting democratic values or insuring Russians are killed in Afghanistan?” said Mr Subrahmanyam. America was so obsessed with the Soviet Union that nothing else mattered to it, he said. India was trying to reduce nuclear weapons in the world. For the last nine years it had tried to force a motion at the United Nations banningthe use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. Mr Subrahmanyam said that it was not contradictory for countries to become nuclear-armed while working for a world without nuclear weapons. “It’s only those who are armed who can disarm,” he said.

“It should be possible for Pakistan and India jointly to negotiate with China, the Soviet Union and the United States to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons to that area.”

Mr Subrahmanyam will be in New Zealand until May 18.