Steve Quayle News Alerts

January 27, 2003
By Edward Luce in New Delhi

India on Monday expressed "deep concern" over China's alleged continued support of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.

"Reliable and widespread reports of Chinese nuclear and missile proliferation to Pakistan cause deep concern," said Yashwant Sinha, India's foreign minister, in a speech in New Delhi on Monday. "There is also a sense of disappointment over the pace of improvement in the relationship [between India and China]," he said.

Mr Sinha's remarks follow the apparent accumulation of evidence by India's intelligence agencies that China continues to supply nuclear material and missile technology to neighbouring Pakistan.

Senior Indian analysts believe that China, whose assistance in the 1980s and 1990s is thought to have been critical to Pakistan's emergence as a nuclear weapons state, is using third party conduits to provide further help to Pakistan, notably via North Korea.

Last year, the US administration expressed worry over reports that Pakistan was providing uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for support on Islamabad's ballistic missile programme. Neither India or Pakistan, which both openly tested nuclear weapons in May 1998, are signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

"India is genuinely perplexed over the continuing links between China and Pakistan on weapons of mass destruction," said Uday Bhaskar at India's government-funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. "China has supposedly signed up to international norms but it appears still to be using clandestine methods to spread nuclear technology."

Mr Sinha's remarks coincide with the latest exchange of nuclear rhetoric between India and Pakistan. On Sunday George Fernandes, India's defence minister, warned Pakistan that it would be "erased from the map of the world" by India if it used such weapons.

Mr Fernandes, who made the remarks on the BBC's Hindi-language service, was thought to be responding to a statement by General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, earlier this month. Gen Musharraf said Pakistan had warned India last year that its military response to any conventional attack by India would be "unconventional".

Pakistan, whose military strength is estimated at roughly half that of India, maintains a "first strike" nuclear doctrine. India has a "no first use" nuclear doctrine. Analysts contrast India and Pakistan's "promiscuous" nuclear rhetoric with the tight restraint shown by the US and the Soviet Union during the cold war.

"Mr Fernandes was simply stating India's doctrine of massive retaliation albeit in rather populist language," said Raja Mohan, a leading Indian analyst. "It is to be hoped that over time both countries will learn to speak in much more guarded terms about their nuclear arsenals."

Earlier this month India announced that it would set up a formal nuclear command authority under the control of Atal Behari Vajpayee, the prime minister. India is also one of the few countries to have pledged public support for America's missile defence programme, which New Delhi believes could help shield India from both Pakistan and China's nuclear missiles.

New Delhi's position, which has been heavily criticised by opposition parties, has irritated China, which strongly opposes the Bush administration's plans to develop a missile defence shield.

However, Mr Sinha also pointed out that India and China, the world's two largest countries, were attempting to improve ties. "India neither pursues nor makes policy towards China based on the belief that conflict between the two countries is inevitable," he said.

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