Imperatives of signing the CTBT

Columnist SULTAN AHMED discusses the economic aspects of signing on the dotted line.

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is in the news again. This time the reasons are not strategic or political but economic.

Pakistan’s over-riding problem today is economic, particularly the fearsome debt burden reaching Rs. 4 trillion. It needs 21 billion dollars before July, 2004 to clear the debt repayments due within three years and three months from now.

Of that large amount Rs. 6 billion carry a heavy interest rate of four to five per cent above libor and that has to be cleared before that snowballs into a far larger amount.

Pakistan is knocking at all kinds of doors to raise that scarce six billion dollars urgently. It wants the loans on soft terms, and disbursed quick. While the international financial institutions are sympathetic to Pakistan’s needs and efforts, they are not ready to furnish that large an amount readily. In addition, Pakistan needs re-scheduling of repayments of four billion dollars due within the same three year period. So in total, the need is for 10 billion dollars and Pakistan has let the world know about that.

Japan as Pakistan’s largest aid-giver wants to help it. It had already given over 10 billion dollars as aid when it stopped in 1998. Its spokesman has said that it would be ready to do special favours to Pakistan if it signs the CTBT.

The fact is others, including international financial institutions from whom we seek aid impose very tough conditions. The most glaring examples are the harsh and numerous conditionalities of the IMF for giving us 596 million dollars under the Stand-by arrangement until September this year in small tranches.

The fact is the situation in India and Pakistan in respect of CTBT is far different. India did not vote for the CTBT at the UN’s Geneva meeting. Instead it walked out of the negotiations protesting discrimination. It did not want a ban on its own nuclear testing if the nuclear-weapon states, numbering five, will not destroy their nuclear stockpile. Pakistan on the other hand participated in the parleys in full and voted for the treaty.

Benazir Bhutto who was then prime minister still stands by the treaty and says the right strategy for Pakistan would have been to explode the nuclear devices in the morning and sign the treaty in the evening. Through that means Pakistan would have had the best of both the worlds: it would have demonstrated its nuclear capability as well as signed the treaty and shown itself to be on a moral high ground compared to India.

As far the other major political party in Pakistan, the Pakistan Muslim League, its president Nawaz Sharif had announced at the UN General Assembly session in 1998 he would sign the CTBT after obtaining a national consensus soon, and had indirectly indicated he needed a year for that.

As far as the world is concerned, CTBT has currently become a non-issue following the refusal of the US Senate to ratify it. Bill Clinton as president of the US then had given it a very high priority until the Senate’s refusal. He left the issue to his successor. And George W Bush is not interested in the CTBT as he regards his National missile defence system which the Republican’s prefer far more important to the US hence there is no pressure from the US on Pakistan now to sign the treaty. Even otherwise the treaty does not become operative until 40 nations, including those with nuclear capability like North Korea and India sign and ratify that. But Pakistan needs to sign the treaty for its own reasons, and not to make the world more secure or less threatened by nuclear weapons.

Pakistan will hardly lose anything by signing CTBT. The only thing it can’t do is to conduct open nuclear explosions. Laboratory or computer testing of the weapon can continue as it had before the explosions of May, 1998.

Of course, there will be pressure on Pakistan not to test its missiles or add to the capacity to make more missiles. And that is galling to some of our nuclear scientists. But Pakistan has enough of a stockpile of Ghauri and Shaheen missiles to insure its safety and launch counter offensive in case of an attack by any country.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been stressing that what Pakistan needs is a minimum nuclear deterrence and Pakistan has already achieved that. That has been conformed by our nuclear scientists as well. In the area of nuclear arms what matters is not the number of weapons but how effective are the limited number of weapons we need to achieve our purpose and insure minimum deterrence. If we have too many times the nuclear warheads we need or the missiles we ought to have to insure our protection, that is superfluous and too costly.

India has been saying that even without signing CTBT it would not be the first country to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan instead has announced it would not be the first country in the region to conduct more nuclear tests, which means that if India does that it would follow suit.

Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar says Pakistan will not announce it would not be the first country to use nuclear weapons as in the case its nuclear weapons would forefeit their capacity for deterrence in a conventional war. India has a far larger army and far more weapons, including war planes, than Pakistan has. And it does not want India to launch a conventional war on the basis of that superior strength in men and weapons. Hence Pakistan wants both countries to renounce the use of force altogether, and not nuclear weapons use only.

But the problem with deciding who began using force first would be to decide first what size of military operations constitute the use of force that can invite a nuclear response. Can wild shooting across the Line of Control in Kashmir be regarded as use of force or some number of freedom fighters crossing the Line of Control and taking to violence? The use of nuclear arms is specific, but determining what constitutes use of force is not specific.

Meanwhile, the retirement of Dr. A. Q. Khan as chairman of the Kahuta or A.Q. Khan Laboratories was said to be a prelude to Pakistan signing the CTBT, although he had earlier expressed himself in favour of Pakistan signing the CTBT. But now reports say that following yet another meeting between him and Gen. Musharraf he has accepted to be adviser to the Chief Executive and may return to the Kahuta Laboratories.

Meanwhile India which is continuing its work on the nuclear technology and its missile programme has announced it has achieved credible minimum nuclear deterrence based on its own technology and appears pretty pleased with it.

Simultaneously it has been stepping up its defence expenditure in a big way. It increased the defence outlay by 28 per cent last year and by 14 per cent this year, without specifying how much more it is allocating for its nuclear programme and missile technology.

The fact is piling up nuclear weapons does not do any great good to either country in a period in which poverty reduction should receive top priority in both the states with 1.15 billion people in the poorest region of the world. India does not think so, while it refers to China with its larger military might as its adversary or threat.

Admittedly nuclear weapons are not something which neighbours can use against each other. The fall out of the fumes from nuclear explosions in the air can be as hazardous to neighbours as direct hits from the bomb. Hence the bomb has not been used against any country since the US bombed Japan 56 years ago. It is one thing for far distant US to drop its bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and be safe from its fumes and quite different for neighbours India or Pakistan to threaten each other with their nuclear weapons.

India’s top defence expert K. Subramanyam has said in a interview with ‘Defence Journal’ in March that all the major Pakistani military and civilian targets are under the command of the Indian missiles, and they include the major dams of Pakistan. The same holds good of Pakistan’s missile against India’s capacity to a large extent.

So India and Pakistan have to eschew wars between them, particularly nuclear war. The prospects are if they start a conventional war between them on any score and it goes against one of the combatants, that country will threaten to use nuclear weapons to achieve a military balance. Even if the rulers do not propose such a disastrous course there will be plenty of rumours to that effect quick, while the conventional war deteriorates. The fact is that the conventional warfare between the two neighbours in 1965 and 1971 have been brief as they are not equipped for very protracted warfare.

The solution to the problem in such a context is for India and Pakistan to seek solutions for their problems earnestly and consistently. That means there should be a sustained dialogue between the two neighbours to solve their political and other disputes. But currently while India admits the need for a dialogue, it is reluctant to enter into one for fear of having to make concessions, particularly in Kashmir. Hence the three ceasefires it had announced since last year have led to nothing. Instead the killing has increased and human suffering in Kashmir is on the rise.

India blames Pakistan for not reducing its cross-border violence or sponsoring Mujahideen groups to cross the Line of Control into Kashmir to confront the Indian troops in there. But if India will not enter into serious negotiations with Pakistan, or even take the first step in that direction, it is not holding any talks with the Kashmir leaders either, particularly of the All Pakistan Hurriyet Conference.

In such a negative context, the Mujahideen groups feel the only way India could be driven towards the conference table is through escalation of violence and increasing the threat to the Indian forces in Kashmir by attacking them. Such attacks enrage India, and make it resolve to delay the talks further, if at all it wants a serious dialogue.

Meanwhile, India is pursuing the cold war policy of the US making the Soviet Union spend more and more on defence, stay economically backward and go burst in the process. That is what is increasing the Indian military spending by 28 per cent last year and 14 per cent this year signify. But Pakistan has refused to play the game and pump in more and more of its scarce resources into military channels and fall into the Indian trap.

It is no use for Pakistan to win the military game and lose the economic battle. A strong economy and a robust industry are essential for the strong defence of a modern state. Hence Pakistan is attending to its economic problems first. It is not doing what India has been by referring to China as the adversary and trying to match its military might with it.

Pakistan is ready to meet India anywhere and at any level. India should respond to that positively instead of talking of talks without really wanting to talk and get things done.