- NEW DELHI -- A Harvard University
paper has put forth the engaging hypothesis that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
is under the "custodial control" of the US. Here's how:
-
- On November 1, 2001, the then Pakistan Foreign Minister,
Abdul Sattar, had made a statement that Pakistan had accepted a US offer
for training Pak experts "for security and protection of nuclear assets".
-
- Sattar, known for his precise choice of words, went on
to say, "Pakistani experts would be apprised of the security measures
being applied by the United States". The interpretation is that the
US was "applying security measures" even before Pakistani personnel
had been trained.
-
- "Pakistan's strategic assets are under foolproof
custodial control," Sattar said, without specifying whose custody,
and leaving open the interpretation that custodial control was being exercised
by someone else.
-
- A loaded endorsement of the safety of Pakistan's nuclear
assets by Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes makes the case stronger.
-
- A day before the Sattar statement, Fernandes said, "Those
concerned with Pakistan's nuclear weapons are responsible people".
-
- Just as Sattar has a reputation for precision, Fernandes
has one for speaking loosely. In 1998, he inadvertently revealed India's
assessment that the main strategic threat to it was not from Pakistan but
China. During the Kargil conflict, he gave a clean chit to Nawaz Sharif
and blamed the intrusions on General Musharraf. This too proved correct.
-
- If the US is indeed exercising custodial control, then
one need have no fears of an Indo-Pak nuclear flashpoint. Assuming this
is true, the logical inference is that it becomes incumbent on the 'custodian'
to ensure that Pakistan does not suffer a military defeat at the hands
of India.
-
- Spilling beans
-
- Were the Indian defence forces mobilised for war during
the Kargil skirmish or not? At a seminar on 'Asymmetric Warfare in South
Asia' last week, General (Retd) V P Malik, while intervening in an innocuous
discussion, said the forces were indeed mobilised along the entire front,
"very close to the present levels".
-
- There was a flutter when Lt-General (Retd) B S Malik
-- who was Chief of Staff of the critical Western Command during the Kargil
scrap -- got up to question this claim. "Sir, were we really mobilised?"
B S Malik asked V P Malik. The audience gasped. "Yes we were. You
don't know. I was the Chief. I ordered it," rasped V P Malik.
-
- B S persisted: "But sir, was the War Book
employed?" "I'm telling you, there was mobilisation, but not
legally (officially)," VP shot back. With the Maliks spilling the
beans, the audience was amused.
-
- War Book procedures have been invoked in the present
build-up. But the Kargil skirmish was officially not war, only a conflict.
That's why VP says mobilisation was there but there was nothing official
about it.
-
- An American participant's observation was telling: "South
Asia is, in one sense, a wonderful laboratory!"
-
- http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_74834,00050002.htm
|
