Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • Chronology of the India-Pakistan Conflict

    NEW DELHI, July 26 (Reuters) – Following is a chronology of major events involving arch-rivals India and Pakistan, whose prime ministers meet in Colombo on the sidelines of a regional conference in Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

    October 27, 1947: War breaks out between India and Pakistan in disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir barely two months after their independence from Britain.

    January 1, 1949: Ceasefire, ordered by United Nations Security Council, takes effect in Kashmir.

    September 6-22, 1965: Full-scale India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, which ends after a U.N. call for ceasefire.

    January 3, 1966: Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President Ayub Khan sign Soviet-mediated peace pact.

    December 3-17, 1971: India-Pakistan War over East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) which ends when 90,000 Pakistani troops surrender.

    July 2, 1972: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and counterpart Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sign peace accord in Shimla.

    Nov 1, 1982: Gandhi and Pakistani President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq agree to begin talks on a non-aggression treaty.

    May 18, 1974: India detonates first nuclear device, but says it is for atomic research and not weapons.

    January 20, 1986: Talks between Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries end inconclusively in Islamabad. But both agree on “desirability” of a peace treaty and non-aggression pact.

    December 31, 1988: India and Pakistan sign agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities.

    February 5, 1989: Pakistan army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg says Pakistan has successfully test-fired its first long-range surface-to-surface rockets, named Hatf-1 and Hatf-2.

    Feb 6, 1992: Pakistan says it has acquired knowledge to make a nuclear bomb but will not do so.

    January 1-3, 1994: Foreign secretaries of the two countries fail to narrow differences on Kashmir. Pakistan rules out more talks unless India stops alleged human rights violations in Kashmir.

    August 23, 1994: Then former premier Nawaz Sharif tells rally in Pakistan-ruled Azad (Free) Kashmir, forming a third of Jammu and Kashmir, that Pakistan has an atomic bomb. The government denies this.

    January 30, 1996: Pakistani and Indian military officers meet on ceasefire line dividing Kashmir to ease tension after clashes.

    June 4, 1996: Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto urges Indian counterpart H.D. Deve Gowda to resume dialogue. Deve Gowda responds positively, but Pakistan drops idea when India holds local elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

    March 28-31, 1997: Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries open the first round peace talks in New Delhi, agree to meet again in Islamabad.

    April 9: Indian Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral and Pakistani counterpart Gohar Ayub Khan meet in New Delhi. India says several hundred fishermen held by each side will be freed.

    May 12: Prime Ministers Inder Kumar Gujral and Nawaz Sharif hold separate talks at SAARC summit in Maldives.

    June 19-23: After second round of talks in Islamabad, Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries announce eight-point agenda for peace talks, including Kashmir issue, and say they will set up mechanism to tackle it.

    August 14-15 : India and Pakistan mark 50 years of independence.

    Aug 26 – India rejects U.S. offer to mediate to end Kashmir border clashes, saying differences should be solved in bilateral talks.

    September 18 – Talks between foreign secretaries end in stalemate, but both sides say they will meet again.

    Sept 22 – In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif offers to open talks on a non-aggression pact with India, proposing that both nations strike a deal to restrain their nuclear and missile capabilities.

    Sept 23 – Sharif meets Gujral for talks in New York which end with no breakthrough.

    Oct 26 – Gujral says he is cautiously optimistic that personal friendship with Sharif will help ease tension over Kashmir, but their meet on the fringes of a Commonwealth summit achieves little.

    Feb 4, 1998 – Pakistan warns it might review its policy of nuclear restraint if India’s new Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government redeems election pledge to make nuclear weapons.

    April 6 – Pakistan tests its longest range, 1,500 km (932 mile) Ghauri missile.

    May 11 – India conducts three underground nuclear tests in the western desert state of Rajasthan near the border with Pakistan.

    May 13 – India conducts two more tests and says its series of tests is complete.

    May 14 – U.S. President Bill Clinton says the tests ae a “terrible” mistake and orders sanctions that put more than $20 billion of aid, loans and trade on ice. Japan orders a block on around $1 billion of aid loans, followed by a host of European nations.

    May 28 – Pakistan conducts five nuclear tests in response to the Indian blasts. President Clinton, his request to Sharif not to test rebuffed, vows sanctions.

    May 30 – Pakistan conducts one more nuclear test and says its series of tests is complete.

    June 6 – U.N. Security Council condemns India and Pakistan for carrying out nuclear tests and urges the two nations to stop all nuclear weapons programs.

    June 12 – India and Pakistan invite each other for talks, but fail to agree on the agenda.

    Group of Eight Nations (G-8) imposes a ban on non-humanitarian loans to India and Pakistan as punishment for their nuclear tests.

    June 23- India suggests talks between the two countries’ prime ministers at South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

    June 24 – Pakistan agrees to talks with India in Colombo.

    July 10 – Vajpayee offers Pakistan a no-first-use pact, economic cooperation, and appeals for its participation in joint efforts to achieve universal disarmament. Pakistan in turn says it is ready to sign a non-aggression treaty with India.

    July 25 – Vajpayee says in a magazine interview that India is committed to resolving differences with Pakistan through a bilateral dialogue. He also indicates that India could conduct further tests of its Agni intermediate-range missile.

  • Humanity at a Crossroads

    In response to the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan, Henry Kissinger provided new insights into his “realist” view of rationality. Referring to Indian and Pakistani tests, he said: “They live in a rough neighborhood. They don’t think the number of bombs makes war more likely. In a perfectly rational world, you’d think more nuclear weapons makes war less likely.”Self-proclaimed “realists,” including Henry Kissinger, have argued that nuclear weapons cannot be eliminated. But these same realists have been responsible for creating and maintaining some basic nuclear fictions that have been with us for decades. The first of these, a legal fiction, was written into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. This fiction said that the only states to be considered nuclear weapons states were those that had detonated a nuclear device prior to January 1, 1967; in other words, the only nuclear weapons states were the US, USSR, UK, France, and China.

    The fiction proclaimed by the “realists” was that only these five states were nuclear weapons states. Israel, India, and Pakistan, all widely understood to have nuclear weapons, were referred to as “threshold” states, meaning states with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

    Another fiction of the “realists” was that it would be possible to simultaneously promote the peaceful atom and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In fact, nuclear programs for supposedly peaceful purposes have served as the cover for efforts to develop nuclear weapons in Argentina, Brazil, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, South Africa and elsewhere. These efforts succeeded in India, Israel, South Africa, and possibly North Korea.

    With the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan, it has become far more difficult to maintain these fictions. It cannot be denied that India and Pakistan are nuclear weapons states, regardless of the date set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Conducting nuclear weapons tests is a solid indicator that a state has nuclear weapons. And Israel, as has been adequately revealed, is a nuclear weapons state with or without tests.

    So where does this leave us? On one level, we are in an Alice in Wonderland world of “realists” who create fictions to serve their view of reality. On another level, most people in the world can now clearly see that the number of nuclear weapons states is growing.

    We have reached a crossroads. The choice before us is to continue to live in the world of make believe, as the “realists” would encourage us to do, or to work for an unequivocal commitment from all nuclear weapons states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals under strict and effective international controls.

    The unrealistic dream that the “realists” profess to believe in is that the nuclear weapons states can keep their arsenals forever without these weapons ever being used by accident or design. This view was implicitly criticized by the prestigious Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which stated in its 1996 report, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    The good news is that the Indians have made clear that they would prefer a world with no nuclear weapons states, and that they are willing to work for this. The Chinese have also made this commitment. Leadership is lacking primarily from the three Western nuclear weapons states and Russia. It is in these countries that the so-called “realists” have maintained their grip on the national security apparatus.

    What is real for the twenty-first century is what we will make real. If we choose to continue to maintain the fiction that nuclear weapons provide for our security, this will be our reality right up until the time a nuclear weapon explodes in one of our major cities or until a nuclear war breaks out.

    On the other hand, if we choose to accept the reality that a nuclear weapons-free world is possible, we will take the necessary steps to achieve such a world. We will begin the good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament promised in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We will negotiate a plan for the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons on Earth, and we will begin “systematic and progressive efforts” to implement this plan.

    Moving ahead to achieve this new reality are eight nations, led by Ireland, calling themselves the New Agenda Coalition. They have urged us to enter the third millennium with an unequivocal commitment in place to achieve total nuclear disarmament. The call of the New Agenda Coalition is in line with the goal of the more than 1100 citizen organizations around the world supporting the Abolition 2000 Global Network’s goal of a treaty banning nuclear weapons by the year 2000.

    There is no doubt that this path is the one that humanity must choose to assure its future. The choice should be easier now that the fictions of so-called “realists” have been exploded along with the detonations by India and Pakistan.

  • The Legal Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition

    The legal case for abolishing nuclear weapons is only one of many that can and should be made. Nuclear weapons place the future of humanity, indeed of all life, in jeopardy. They are not even weapons in any traditional sense. They kill indiscriminately. They cause unnecessary suffering that affects present and future generations. They have no legitimate use in warfare. They are instruments of genocide that no sane person or society would contemplate using.

    The questions that I will address are these: Is the threat or use of nuclear weapons illegal under international law? Is the United States under a legal obligation to eliminate its nuclear arsenal? The answer to both questions is Yes, and it seems to me remarkable that the U.S. media has been nearly silent with regard to these issues.

    A small breakthrough in this area occurred in June 1998 when Max Frankel, the distinguished columnist and former editor of the New York Times, wrote in the New York Times Magazine: “If I and other observers had resisted the nuclear club’s double standard and exposed its hollow assumptions about human nature, the world might by now have devised more effective international controls over atomic weapons. The have-nots might have been appeased if they had been given a major voice in a strong international inspection agency and the right to pry even into the monopolists’ stockpiles — including ours. Instead we have wasted the half century since Hiroshima and provoked a chain reaction that is truly prolific.”

    Let me offer a syllogism, an expression of logic: All states are subject to international law. The United States is a state. Therefore, the United States is subject to international law.

    Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with the logic that our country is subject to international law. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, for example, was recently quoted in the Los Angeles Times as stating, “To hell with international law….You’ve got a choice to make. You’re either with us or against us, and I only hope for your sake you make the right choice.”

    One choice is the rule of law. The other is the rule of force. I would argue that the right choice is international law. It is in the interests of our country and all countries to abide by the rule of law. Either way, we can be assured that other countries will follow our lead.

    International law is made in two ways — by treaties, which require the agreement of nations, and by such widespread agreement on issues of law that the law is accepted as customary international law. Both means carry the force of law in the international system.

    The treaty which is most relevant to the abolition of nuclear weapons is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was opened for signatures in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. This treaty seeks to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to states which did not possess them prior to January 1, 1967. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (U.S., Russia, UK, France and China) are the states recognized in the NPT as possessing nuclear weapons prior to this date.

    In return for the non-nuclear weapons states promising not to acquire nuclear weapons, the five nuclear weapons states promised in Article VI of the NPT to pursue good faith negotiations for a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and for nuclear disarmament.

    When the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995, the nuclear weapons states promised the “determined pursuit…of systematic and progressive efforts” to achieve nuclear disarmament. For most states in the world, as reflected in their votes in the UN General Assembly, the efforts of the nuclear weapons states in this regard have been far from satisfactory.

    The customary international law most relevant to the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons is international humanitarian law. This is part of the law of armed conflict, and was developed to set limits on the use of force in armed conflict for humanitarian purposes. The basic premise is that the means of injuring the enemy are not unlimited. Put another way, all is not fair (or legal) in warfare.

    Under international law, a state cannot use weapons that fail to discriminate between civilians and combatants. Nor can a state use weapons that cause unnecessary suffering to combatants such as dum-dum bullets.

    In December 1994 the United Nations General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body in the world on matters of international law, for an advisory opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The exact question asked was: “Is the threat or use of nuclear weapons in any circumstance permitted under international law?”

    The United States, joined by the UK, France, and Russia, argued to the Court that it should not hear the case because this was a political rather than legal issue. The Court, turning aside these arguments, issued its historic opinion on July 8, 1996. It was an opinion of great significance for humanity, but to date it has been largely ignored by the U.S. and its NATO allies. It has also been largely ignored by the U.S. media.

    The Court began by unanimously finding that international law does not provide specific authorization of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, the Court found that international law did not contain “any comprehensive and universal prohibition of the threat or use of nuclear weapons as such.” Three of the 14 judges — Judge Koroma of Sierra Leone, Judge Shahabuddeen of Guyana, and Judge Weeramantry of Sri Lanka — voted against this position, and issued powerful dissenting opinions.

    The Court then went on to state unanimously that any threat or use of nuclear weapons for purposes other than self-defense, in accord with articles 2(4) and 51 of the United Nations Charter, was prohibited. It followed this statement with the unanimous conclusion that a threat or use of nuclear weapons must also meet the requirements of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law.

    Earlier in its opinion, the Court had referred to “cardinal principles” of humanitarian law as follows: “The first is aimed at the protection of the civilian population and civilian objects and establishes the distinction between combatants and non-combatants; States must never make civilians the object of attack and must consequently never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets. According to the second principle, it is prohibited to cause unnecessary suffering to combatants: it is accordingly prohibited to use weapons causing them such harm or uselessly aggravating their suffering. In application of that second principle, States do not have unlimited freedom of choice of means in the weapons they use.” The Court also made clear that if a use would be unlawful, the threat of such use would also be unlawful.

    Based upon its findings with regard to the application of international law to nuclear weapons, the Court reached an unusual two-paragraph conclusion that began, “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.”

    The Court continued with a second paragraph stating that the current state of international law and the elements of fact at its disposal did not allow the Court to “conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a state would be at stake.” This indetermination by the Court when “the very survival of a state would be at stake,” must be read in connection with the absolute prohibition of violating international humanitarian law. Thus, even in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, it would be necessary to avoid injuring a civilian population and causing unnecessary suffering to combatants. This would not be possible by means of using nuclear weapons for retaliation against a civilian population.

    The vote on this two-paragraph conclusion was 7 to 7, with the President of the Court casting the deciding vote, according to the rules of the Court. However, when you analyze who voted against the conclusion you find that the three judges from Western nuclear weapons states were joined by the three judges who found an absolute prohibition on nuclear weapons. The Japanese judge also voted against this conclusion because he opposed the issue coming before the Court. Thus, a better reading of this vote would have ten supporting the conclusion or going further and arguing for an absolute prohibition, and only the judges from the U.S., UK and France opposing it because they found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would not be “generally” illegal.

    The Court went on to state unanimously: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” In 1996 and 1997 the United Nations General Assembly passed resolutions urging the nuclear weapons states to fulfill this obligation.

    In issuing the Court’s opinion, Judge Bedjaoui, the then president of the Court, referred to nuclear weapons as “the ultimate evil” and declared, “Nuclear weapons can be expected — in the present state of scientific development at least — to cause indiscriminate victims among combatants and non-combatants alike, as well as unnecessary suffering among both categories. The very nature of this blind weapon therefore has a destabilizing effect on humanitarian law which regulates discernment in the type of weapon used.”

    Judge Bedjaoui also argued that it would be “quite foolhardy…to set the survival of a State above all other considerations, in particular above the survival of mankind itself.”

    I will conclude with a few observations.

    First, the threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal in any conceivable circumstance. Therefore, current U.S. and NATO policies relying upon nuclear weapons are illegal under international law.

    Second, the U.S. has not been fulfilling its obligation under international law to negotiate the complete elimination of nuclear weapons under strict and effective international control.

    Third, the likely outcome of this failure of leadership by the U.S. is the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Treaty at its year 2000 Review Conference. The nuclear testing by India and Pakistan can be linked to India’s strong opposition to what it has termed “nuclear apartheid,” that is the continued reliance on nuclear weapons by a small group of states that have failed to fulfill their obligations under international law.

    Fourth, the U.S. media has not played a constructive role in analyzing this situation, and reporting on it to the American people.

    Fifth, current U.S. policies make the American people and the U.S. media unwitting accomplices in policies that threaten the mass murder of hundreds of millions of innocent people. If these weapons are used ever again, by accident or design, history — if there is a history — will judge the American people harshly for not demanding the abolition of these weapons when the opportunity to do so presented itself with the end of the Cold War.

    At the outset, I said that the legal case for abolishing nuclear weapons is only one of many that can be made. The legal case is important, but the most important case that can be made is the moral case. To abolish nuclear weapons is to uphold the sanctity of life. I will conclude by quoting Lee Butler, a former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command and an eloquent spokesman for abolishing these weapons. General Butler stated: “We cannot at once keep sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it. It is time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason and the rightful interests of humanity.” This cannot be done without the active participation of the media in analyzing and communicating the case for nuclear weapons abolition to the American people.

  • No Time to Think

    Reprinted with permission from Himal Magazine, Kathmandu, Nepal, July Anti-Nuke Issue

    For decades, military planners in the United States, former Soviet Union, and the other nuclear weapons states have convinced themselves that their nuclear weapons are a deterrent. The nuclear annihilation that would follow if these weapons were used was supposed to make any enemy stop, think, and decide that war was not worth the consequences. To make sure that an enemy had no doubt about these consequences, all the nuclear weapons states created nuclear arsenals designed to fight a nuclear war. Nuclear deterrence was built on assuming that one day the simple fear of nuclear weapons would not be enough and the weapons would have to be used.

    The reliance on nuclear weapons that could be used in a real war led each nuclear weapons state to live in perpetual fear of a surprise attack that would make their weapons useless. This fear was greatest during the Cold War, when each side thought the other could not be trusted. The US and Soviet Union addressed their fears by building enormously complex early warning systems that would let them know they were about to be attacked and give them time to launch their nuclear weapons before they were destroyed.

    The early warning systems of the superpowers had another crucial role. Since any war would have meant nuclear war, both sides wanted to make sure that war did not begin by accident. Early warning systems created time during which people could make decisions using real information about what was actually happening rather than responding simply on the basis of fears of what might be about to happen.

    The US built and still operates the biggest and most sophisticated early warning system. It is based around a missile warning system and works by collecting information from satellites that can detect the launch of missiles from another country and radars around the world that can follow the missiles to see where they are going. The information is transmitted from these satellites and radars to where it can be processed by computers and then analysed and interpreted by people. To make sure that this is done seriously and properly, this assessment is done at several places separately. If the information is determined to be reliable, it is sent to more senior people who are supposed to decide how to respond.

    When the satellites and radars say that missiles may have been launched towards the US, there is a Missile Display Conference among the commanders of the places where the analysis of the information is carried out. If they decide that the danger is serious, and not a mistake made by the satellites, or radar, or somewhere along the communication system, or a mistake by one of the people who is supposed to interpret the information, then a Threat Assessment Conference is called. This includes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and senior military commanders.

    At the same time as a Threat Assessment Conference is called, a state of alert is declared, fighter aircraft take off, nuclear-armed bombers are told to start their engines, and missiles are readied for launch. This is the last step before a Missile Attack Conference. This is where the President is told what has happened, and asked to decide what is to be done.

    Both the US and the Soviet Union, now Russia, had these multiple levels of decision making because they had the time to check, and double check, to make sure that they knew what was happening. Their satellites and early warning radar systems gave them information within one and a half minutes of the possible launch of a missile. They took about two and a half minutes to work out what was happening from this information. A meeting could be called and a threat determined a few minutes after this. In other words within about six or seven minutes, it was possible to decide if a nuclear attack may have started. Since the missiles would have taken about 25 minutes to travel from the US to the Soviet Union or in the other direction, there was still time for a final confirmation that the missiles were real. There was even time left to find out if there had been an accidental launch of the missiles, and to decide what to do.

    False Alarms

    Given the terrible consequences of nuclear war, enormous financial and technical resources were invested in setting up and running these early warning systems, and trying to make them fool-proof. However, history shows that these systems failed. Not once, or twice, but frequently. There is no real history of all the failures. It is known, however, that between 1977 and 1984 the US early warning system showed over 20,000 false alarms of a missile attack on the US. Over 1000 of these were considered serious enough for bombers and missiles to be placed on alert.

    Some of these incidents give terrifying insights into how easily even the most carefully designed and technologically advanced warning systems can go wrong. Two instances will suffice. In November 1979, the US missile warning system showed that a massive attack had suddenly been launched. Jets were launched, and a nuclear alert declared. There was no attack. There were no missiles. The warning was due to a computer that had been used to test the warning system to see how it would behave if there was an attack. Somebody had forgotten to turn off the computer after the exercise.

    A second example was even more dramatic. In June 1980, the early warning systems showed that two missiles had been launched towards the US. This was followed by signals that there were more missiles following the first two. A Threat Assessment Conference was called. The situation was considered to be sufficiently serious that the President’s special airplane was prepared for take-off. Again there was no attack, nor any missiles. The reason for the mistaken signals, and interpretations, was eventually traced to a computer chip that was not working properly. The repeated failures of the US early warning system led at one time to an official enquiry which reported that the system “had been mismanaged… by the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Department of Defence”. In other words, every institution assigned to make sure the system worked had failed in its task.

    It was not just the US system that failed. While there is little information yet on how the Soviet Union managed its nuclear weapons warning systems, there is at least one example from recent years that suggests it cannot have worked any better than the US system. On 25 January1995, a Norwegian rocket was launched to take scientific measurements. The Norwegian government told the Russian government in advance that this would happen. Nevertheless, when the rocket was picked up by Russian radar it was treated as a possible missile attack. It seems a warning was sent to the Russian defence minister’s headquarters, the Russian military leadership, and to the commanders of Russian missiles that an attack may be underway. A message was then sent to Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President, and an emergency conference called with nuclear commanders over the telephone. Boris Yeltsin has confirmed that such an emergency conference did take place.

    Fear and Paranoia

    The lessons for India and Pakistan are obvious. Experience shows that in any real crisis involving the two, fear and paranoia soon become overwhelming. One need look no further than the recent panic about a possible pre-emptive attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities by India. The fear was there despite a nearly ten-year-old agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities. In the absence of basic trust, generals on each side will always assume those on the other side might want to launch a surprise attack, and will want, in turn, to be prepared to respond with nuclear weapons.

    The need for early warning systems is therefore clear. But, even if Pakistan and India had the technology for early warning, and even if it worked reliably, they could not use it, geography has made sure of that. The time to take decisions will not be available to either Pakistan or India. Instead of the 25 minutes that the US and the Soviet Union had, it would take a Prithvi missile somewhere between three and five minutes to reach almost anywhere in Pakistan. It would take the Ghauri missile about five minutes to reach Delhi. In such a short time, an early warning system could give warning of what might be happening, a meeting could be called, and then time would run out. There would be no time to decide whether the warning was real, or a mistake. The decision would have to be made on either launching the missiles immediately or taking the risk of the missiles being destroyed before they could be used.

    In order to avoid such a situation, some people may suggest that India and Pakistan find a way to create time for the generals to make sure they know what is happening in any future crisis. It may be possible to create such time by an agreement whereby each side would keep its warheads stored separately from missiles and airplanes and let the other side check to make sure this was indeed the case. Any nuclear attack could then only come after the warheads were taken out of storage and then loaded onto missiles or planes, and an attempt to do so would be detected.

    But this is, at best, a desperate measure. The lack of trust is so great that making sure a agreement was being honoured would require an extraordinary system of allowing inspections of each other’s missile and airforce bases and nuclear facilities. There is no prospect of that happening. But, any agreement without such inspections would mean the generals on each side, fearing their counterparts had secretly hidden a few nuclear warheads with some missiles, would do the same. The nuclear dangers would remain despite an agreement, and might actually become greater.

    The alternative is simple. No nuclear weapons mean no nuclear crises. No nuclear crises mean no danger of nuclear war.

  • My A-bomb Experience and the Spirit of Hiroshima

    In the past, Japan inflicted indescribable suffering and deep sorrow on China and other countries of Asia. Fundamentally, responsibility for war damage inflicted by Japan clearly lies with the Japanese government. I believe that we as individual human beings, however, should not neglect to reflect on this matter. Though I was only a youth, I believe it is essential for me, as a Japanese who was alive at the time, to fully reflect on and etch in my mind the lessons of Japan’s invasion and war and our colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.

    August 6, 1945, I was fourteen years old, in my second year of middle school. I was standing in the schoolyard 1.4 kilometers from the hypocenter with about 150 other students. Suddenly, with a tremendous roar, everything went pitch black. At length, the smoke cleared and I could see the schoolyard again. I had been blown backward about 10 meters by the blast. My classmates toohad been blown forward, backward, left or right. They were fallen and scattered all around. The school building was a low pile of rubble. The surrounding houses had also vanished. Except for a few large buildings in the distance everything had vanished. For an instant I thought, “The whole city’s gone!”

    As I came to my senses, I examined my own body. My uniform was burned to shreds. I had serious burns on the back of my head, my back, both arms, and both legs. The skin of both of my hands had peeled off and was dangling down on strips, revealing raw, red flesh underneath. Pieces of glass were protruding from my body in several places. Suddenly, I was attacked by an unfamiliar sense of horror. In a matter of minutes I was heading for the river as fast as I could go. Not long on my way, I heard someone calling my name. Looking around, I saw my classmate Tatsuya Yamamoto. We used to walk to school together every day. Now, he was seeking help, crying, “Mama, Mama…help me!” I said, “Stop crying! We just have to get out of here!” And with me alternating between scolding and encouraging, we fled together toward the river.

    I saw a line of survivors looking dazed, dragging their legs wearily and pressing toward me. Their peeled arms dangled oddly in front of them, and their clothes were in tatters. Many were virtually naked. I couldn’t even see them as human; I felt I was watching a grotesque procession of ghosts. I saw one man with hundreds of glass shards piercing his body from the waist up. The skin of another man had peeled off his entire upper body, exposing a mass of red flesh. A woman was covered in blood, one eyeball grotesquely dangling out of its socket. Next to a mother whose skin had completely peeled off lay a loudly crying baby, its entire body burnt. Corpses were scattered everywhere. A dead woman’s internal organs had burst out onto the ground around her. It was all so utterly gruesome, a living hell indescribable in words. We continued to head resolutely for the river.

    But all the streets and pathways leading to the riverbank were blocked by the wreckage of toppled houses. It often seemed impossible to get through. In a mindless state of utter desperation we crawled on all fours over and through the ruins until at last we managed to find the river. Luckily, just where we emerged on the bank we found a small wooden bridge that had miraculously withstood the blast.

    Then it happened, just as we were stepping out onto the bridge. Tongues of fire burst violently out from the collapsed houses on both sides of the street. As we stood and gaped, the whole riverside transformed into a sea of fire. Crackling loud as thunder, towering pillars of fire shot up towards the heavens, like the eruption of a volcano. Fortunately we were beyond the reach of the conflagration, but my friend Yamamoto had somehow vanished.

    Finally I escaped to the other side of the river where there wasn’t any fire. Having reached relative safety, the intensity of my flight subsided somewhat, and I was suddenly aware that my whole body was burning hot. To ease the pain I went down to the river, dipping myself three times. The cool water of the river was to my scorched body an exquisite, priceless balm. “Ah, I’m saved!” And with that thought, for the first time, my tears flowed and would not stop. I came up from the river and was guided to a temporary relief station hastily set up in a bamboo grove. There I received some minimal first aid and rested a while. As I sat there it started to rain, the first black rain I had ever seen. Huge drops that made a big noise when they fell. I just watched, bewildered, thinking, “Is there really such a thing as black rain?” I waited for it to stop, then started walking home.

    After a while, again I heard someone calling my name. I turned and saw Tokujiro Hatta, another friend who used to walk to school with Yamamoto and me. “Takahashi, help me! Take me home with you!” he begged, groaning. For some reason, the soles of his feet were burned so badly that the skin had peeled, revealing the red flesh beneath. He certainly couldn’t walk. Though I myself was seriously burned, I was not the sort to abandon a friend and continue on my way alone. I decided immediately to take Hatta along with me. But how? Luckily, though his feet were burned, the rest of his body had escaped serious burns or cuts. After considering the possibilities for a while, I decided there were two ways to get him home without having his feet touch the ground: one was to have him crawl on his hands and knees; the other was to lean him back on his heels while I supported him. Thus we began our trek, alternating between these two methods. Plodding along slower than cows, step after agonizing step, somehow we managed to help each other along. At one point, overcome by fatigue, we were forced to sit by the road and rest. For no particular reason I looked back over my shoulder. “Hey! Isn’t that my great aunt and uncle? They’re coming this way!” I used every ounce of strength I could muster to shout to them, and they stopped. They were on their way home from a memorial service in the country. Our meeting was a complete coincidence. With their help we made it home.

    Once home, I collapsed in a coma and remained unconscious for three weeks. Later, I was treated by a doctor–an ear, nose, and throat specialist–who came to our house morning and night to see me. Ordinarily, severe burns would not be treated by an otolaryngologist, but with nearly all the doctors and nurses in the city either dead or incapacitated, I was extremely fortunate to receive treatment from any sort of doctor at all. I battled my burns and disease for a year and a half, hovering between life and death. A Japanese saying goes, “Nine deaths for one life, ” and that was precisely my experience. My friends passed from this world with acute radiation sickness: Tokujiro Hatta two days later, and Tatsuya Yamamoto after one month-and-a-half.

    I have survived these many years, but my right elbow and the fingers of my right hand except for my thumb are bent and immobile. Keloid scars remain on my back, arms and legs. The cartilage in my ears deteriorated from the blood and pus that collected there, leaving my ears deformed. I continue to grow a “black nail” from the first finger of my right hand. (You may have seen two samples of this “black nail” that fell off and are on display at the Peace Memorial Museum.) Further, I am afflicted with chronic hepatitis, a liver infection that is a nationally recognized aftereffect of the bomb. I have been hospitalized ten times since 1971. Besides my liver problem, I am afflicted with numerous other ailments and cannot help but constantly worry about my health.

    While struggling with this frail and damaged body, I have often wondered in despair, “Do I really need to live with all this pain?” But each time I have answered, “But you’ve already come so far.” And that thought has kept me going. Of my sixty classmates that day, fifty were cruelly slaughtered by the atomic bomb. To date, I have confirmed the survival of only thirteen of us; I am one of the very few still alive.

    “I cannot let the deaths of my classmates be in vain. I must be the voice conveying their silent cries to the generations to come. As a survivor, this is my mission and my duty.” These ideas are engraved on my heart, and I have lived to this day repeating such words to myself continually. My friends were helplessly sacrificed to the atomic bomb without ever reaching adulthood. They died writhing in agony. Their short, young lives abruptly ended. Such enormous sorrow. Such horrible frustration.

    Among humankind’s abilities, it is said imagination is the weakest and forgetfulness the strongest. We cannot by any means, however, forget Hiroshima, and we cannot lose the ability to abolish war, abolish nuclear weapons, and imagine a world of peace. Hiroshima is not just a historical fact. It is a warning and lesson for the future. We must overcome the pain, sorrow, and hatred of the past, we must conquer the argument that the damage inflicted and the damage incurred in the name of war were justifiable, we must conquer the logic that the dropping of the atomic bomb was justifiable. We must convey the Spirit of Hiroshima– the denial of war and hope for the abolition of nuclear weapons–throughout Japan and throughout the world. I sincerely hope you have understood the Spirit of Hiroshima. I will always be praying for your steadfast efforts and progress toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

  • British Medical Association Calls for Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

    On July 8, 1998 in Cardiff the British Medical Association passed a resolution stating:

    “That this meeting considers it a duty to work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons which are a worldwide threat to public health

    1) by condemning the development, teting, production, deployment, threat, and use of nuclear weapons;

    2) by requesting that governments refrain from all these activities and work in good faith for their elimination;

    3) by calling for commencement of negotiations for a nuclear weapons convention similar to those for biological and chemical weapons.”

     

  • Joint Statement Against Nuclear Tests and Weapons By Retired Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi Armed Forces Personnel

    The following Joint Statement Against Nuclear Tests and Weapons signed by sixty-three Retired Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi Armed Forces Personnel is hereby submitted to:

    The Secretary General of the United Nations
    To the Prime Minister of Pakistan
    To the Prime Minister of India
    To the President of the United States of America
    To the President of France
    To the Prime Minister of U.K.
    To the President of China
    To the President of the Russian Federation

    Recent developments in South Asia in the field of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery are a serious threat to the well being of this region. The fact that India and Pakistan have fought wars in the recent past and do not as yet enjoy the best of relations, makes this development all the more ominous. The signatories of this statement are not theoreticians or arm-chair idealists; we have spent many long years in the profession of arms and have served our countries both in peacetime and in war. By virtue of our experience and the positions we have held, we have a fair understanding of the destructive parameters of conventional and nuclear weapons. We are of the considered view that nuclear weapons should be banished from the South Asian region, and indeed from the entire globe. We urge India and Pakistan to take the lead by doing away with nuclear weapons in a manifest and verifiable manner, and to confine nuclear research and development strictly to peaceful and beneficient spheres.

    We are convinced that the best way of resolving disputes is through peaceful means and not through war – least of all by the threat or use of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan need to address their real problems of poverty and backwardness, not waste our scarce resources on acquiring means of greater and greater destruction.
    Signed by:
    Air Marshal Zafar A. Chaudhry (Pakistan)
    Admiral L. Ramdas (India) [Ex. Chief of the Indian Navy]
    Lt. Gen Gurbir Mansingh (India)
    Brigadier John Anthony (India)
    Brigadier Madhav Prasad (India)
    Commodore Norman Warner (India)
    Major Vijai Uppal (India)
    Lt Col G.J. Eduljee (India)
    Air Commodore A.K. Banerjee (India)
    Air Commodore A.K. Venkateshwaran (India)
    Commodore K.K. Garg (India)
    Major General M A Mohaiemen (Bangladesh)
    Air Vice Marshal Saeedullah Khan (Pakistan)
    Air Vice Marshal M. Ikramullah (Pakistan)
    Air Vice Marshal M. Y. Khan (Pakistan)
    Air Vice Marshal C. R. Nawaz (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore S. T. E. Piracha (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore Rafi Qadar (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore Ejaz Azam Khan (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore Qamarud Din (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore Habibur Rahman (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore G. Mujtaba Qureshi (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore A. Aziz (Pakistan)
    Air Commodore Wahid A. Butt (Pakistan)
    Wing Commander N. A. Siddiqui (Pakistan)
    Wing Commander M. Yunus (Pakistan)
    Wing Commander Shajar Hussain (Pakistan)
    Flight Lieutenant M. A. Mannan (Pakistan)
    Group Captain N. A. Sheikh (Pakistan)
    Group Captain Amir Shah (Pakistan)
    Group Captain M. Amin (Pakistan)
    Group Captain G. M. Siddiqi (Pakistan)
    Group Captain Khalid Jalil (Pakistan)
    Group Captain Sirajud Din Ahmed (Pakistan)
    Major Saeed A. Malik (Pakistan)
    Dr. Capt. Tariq Rahman (Pakistan)
    Brigadier Rao Abid Hamid (Pakistan)
    Major Ishtiaq Asi (Pakistan)
    Wing Commander Aameen Taqi (Pakistan)
    Brig Izzat M. Shah (Pakistan)
    Sqn Ldr Ihsan Qadir (Pakistan)
    Lt Col Abdur Rehman Lodhi (Pakistan)
    Maj Amjad Iqbal (Pakistan)
    Maj Ishtiaq Asif (Pakistan)
    Lt. Col. Nadeem Rashid Khan (Pakistan)
    Brig Shahid Aziz (Pakistan)
    Brig Bashir Ahmad (Pakistan)
    Capt Omar Asghar Khan (Pakistan)
    Air Marshal M. Asghar Khan (Pakistan) [Ex-C-in-C Pakistan Air Force]
    Lt. Col. Ahsan Zaman (Pakistan)
    Lt. Col. Azhar Irshad (Pakistan)
    Brig Jahangir Malik (Pakistan)
    Lt. Col. S. Imtiaz H. Bokhari (Pakistan)
    Maj.Gen. Syed Mustafa Anwar Husain (Pakistan)
    Brig Humayun Malik (Pakistan)
    Brig A. Wahab (Pakistan)
    Maj. Naim Ahmad (Pakistan)
    Brig SE Jivanandham (Pakistan)
    Brig Luqman Mahmood (Pakistan)
    Lt. Gen Sardar F.S. Lodi (Pakistan)
    Lt. Col. Ernest Shams (Pakistan)
    Lt. Col. Aijazulhaq Effendi (Pakistan)
    Brig Mir Abad Hussain, ex Ambassador (Pakistan)

  • Resolution on Nuclear Testing by India and Pakistan

    The European Parliament,

    -having regard to its previous resolutions on nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear testing and the work of the Canberra Commission for a nuclear weapon-free world,

    -having regard to the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),

    -having regard to the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT),

    -having regard to the statements made by the Council of the European Union, the G7, the UN Security Council and the meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council,

    A. whereas the signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty have committed themselves to the objective of the elimination of all nuclear weapons,

    B. whereas over the past decades the two main nuclear powers have reduced the number of their nuclear warheads and envisage continuing this reduction through a number of bilateral agreements,

    C. whereas these reductions do not, as yet, point to rapid progress towards full elimination of these weapons,

    D. noting with great concern that India carried out five nuclear tests during the period 11-13 May 1998,

    E. noting with great concern that Pakistan then carried out six nuclear tests during the period 28-30 May 1998,

    H. noting that a number of countries, including some EU Member States, the United States and Japan, have decided to impose sanctions on both countries in response to these nuclear tests,

    I. noting that both countries already allocate a disproportionate part of both their GNP and their budget on military spending and on military, nuclear research and development,

    J. whereas the nuclear tests are likely to damage both the Pakistani and Indian economies, in view of their effect on foreign loans and investment, which in turn will affect the already low social condition of the population,

    K. emphasizing that in order to strengthen stability and security in the region and in the world as a whole it is necessary for India and Pakistan on the one hand to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without any modification thereof, and on the other hand to adhere to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty immediately and unconditionally, thus facilitating its entry into force,

    L. noting the unanimous conclusion of the International Court of Justice that there is an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict international control,

    1. Condemns the recent nuclear tests carried out in May 1998 by India and then by Pakistan and expresses its deep concern about the danger to peace, security and stability in the region and in the world as a whole provoked by these tests; remains convinced that the NPT and the CTBT are the cornerstones of the global non-proliferation regime and the essential bases for progress towards nuclear disarmament;

    2. Urges the Indian and Pakistani governments to refrain from any further nuclear tests, to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without any modification of this Treaty and to adhere to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty immediately and unconditionally;

    3. Calls on the Indian and Pakistani governments to give a commitment immediately not to assemble or deploy nuclear weapons and devices, and to halt the development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads;

    4. Calls on the Indian and Pakistani Governments to start talks immediately to reduce tension in the region, to establish a framework for reconciliation and cooperation and thus to promote peace, security and stability in South Asia and throughout the continent; calls on the Council and the Member States to assist the Governments of India and Pakistan, where necessary and possible, in this process of reconciliation and cooperation, possibly by (co-)sponsoring a regional conference on security and confidence-building measures;

    5. Calls on the Council and the Member States to prevent the export of equipment, materials and/or technology that could in any way assist programmes in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons or for ballistic missiles capable of carrying such weapons;

    6. Calls on Member States which have not yet done so to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty immediately, in order to facilitate its entry into force as soon as possible;

    7. Calls on the five nuclear weapons states to interpret their Treaty obligations as an urgent commitment to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons;

    8. Asks the Council and the Commission to examine ways and means to promote further progress towards the gradual elimination of nuclear weapons and calls on the Council to present a regular progress report to Parliament;

    9. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the UN Security Council, the governments of the Member States and the governments and parliaments of India and Pakistan.

  • Nuclear Fears, Nuclear History

    Published in Communalism Combat, Bombay

    Atul Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif have two things in common. Both of them have ordered five nuclear tests, and both of them justified their orders by claiming that their nuclear weapons are defensive. This argument was invented by the Americans to justify their nuclear weapons, after the Soviet Union started to build its own nuclear weapons. It was such a convenient argument that all the nuclear states started to use it once they built nuclear weapons. Now every country with nuclear weapons claims that its weapons are defensive, it is just other countries’ nuclear weapons that are a threat.

    How are nuclear weapons a threat? The first answer given is that an enemy may threaten to use nuclear weapons as way to intimidate or blackmail and so win a war. As the most destructive weapons ever made, nuclear weapons should make states that have them invincible. They should be able to win all their wars. In fact, no one should want to fight such states because they have nuclear weapons.

    The facts of the last fifty years tell another story. Nuclear weapons states have elected to fight wars on many occasions. They have lost many of them. Britain fought and lost at Suez, even though they it had already developed nuclear weapons. The United States suffered significant defeats during the Korean war and the war ended with a stalemate. The French lost Algeria, even though they had their nuclear weapons. China’s nuclear weapons did not help against Vietnam. The most famous examples are of course the defeat of the United States in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan despite having enormous numbers of nuclear weapons. In all these cases, a non-nuclear state fought and won against a nuclear armed state.

    Another fact from the last fifty years is that having nuclear weapons offers no protection against nuclear threats. During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union made nuclear threats numerous times, with the United States making around twenty such threats and the Soviet Union making five or six. Even though both sides had nuclear weapons, this did not change the fact they were threatened by the other side. If a state with nuclear weapons is going to make a threat, it will do so regardless of whether the state being threatened has nuclear weapons of its own.

    The only other use for nuclear weapons that has ever been claimed is that nuclear weapons are supposed to deter attacks by other nuclear weapons and so prevent war between nuclear armed states. This is what is usually meant by nuclear deterrence. The normal example of nuclear deterrence that is used is between the superpowers during the Cold War. The absence of war between them is widely attributed to both sides having nuclear weapons. This cannot however be proven. All that can be said is that the absence of war coincided with both sides having nuclear weapons. It is not logical to deduce that nuclear weapons prevented a war that would otherwise have taken place. The absence of war between the United States and the Soviet Union may simply have been due to neither side wanting a war. The experience of total war in World War II was so terrible that this may have been sufficient to prevent a major war. It is worth remembering over 20 million Soviets were killed in that war.

    The history of the Cold War is in fact the history of the elusive search for deterrence. As the years passed and became decades, the amount of destructive power needed to create deterrence kept on increasing. From a few simply atom bombs, it became hundreds of bombs, then thousands and then came the hydrogen bomb, with a destructive power a hundred times greater than an atom bomb. But, even having a few such hydrogen bombs was not enough. McGeorge Bundy, who was an advisor in the White house during both the Cuban Missile Crisis, has argued that deterrence works only if “we assume that each side has very large numbers of thermonuclear weapons [hydrogen bombs] which could be used against the opponent, even after the strongest possible pre-emptive attack.” It is this kind of nuclear arsenal that is credited by Bundy, and other American supporters of deterrence as being responsible for maintaining the Ñnuclear peaceâ between the United States and Soviet Union. The urge to have weapons that could survive a pre-emptive attack is why both sides developed nuclear submarines and specially hardened silos for missiles. This effort to create deterrence cost the United States at least $4 trillion ($,4000,000,000,000) to develop, produce, deploy, operate, support and control its nuclear forces over the past 50 years.

    The Americans were not alone in thinking that large numbers of hydrogen bombs that could survive a nuclear attack were necessary for deterrence.

    All five of the established nuclear weapons state have tried to achieve this kind of nuclear arsenal. None of them has stopped developing their arsenals once they built simple nuclear weapons. they have not even relied on large numbers of such simple weapons. They have gone on to build weapons tens if not hundreds or thousands of times more destructive. Even the smallest nuclear arsenal, belonging to Britain, has 200 thermonuclear weapons with a collective destructive power two thousand times greater than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

    There are, however, some important dissenting voices who say that deterrence never worked. General George Lee Butler, who until a few years ago actually commanded all of the United States strategic nuclear weapons has said the world survived the Cuban missile crisis no thanks to deterrence, but only by the grace of God. If General Butler is right, and even the fear created by “very large numbers” of hydrogen bombs was not enough to stop two nuclear states getting ready to go to war then what purpose is served by this fear? What this fear can do is stop peace. Even though the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union gone, the nuclear weapons are still there. The US still has over 10,000 and Russia about as many. The fear now is not the other state, but the others nuclear weapons. As long as there are nuclear weapons there cannot be real peace.

    History teaches that nuclear fears cannot be calmed with nuclear weapons. The simple truth is that there has never been a weapon that can offer a defense against being afraid. The only defense against fear is courage and courage needs no weapons to make its presence felt.

     

  • G8 Foriegn Ministers Communique on Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Tests

    London

    1. We, the Foreign Ministers of eight major industrialised democracies and the Representative of the European Commission, held a special meeting in London on 12 June 1998 to consider the serious global challenge posed by the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan. Recalling the statement issued by our Heads of State or Government on 15 May, and emphasising the support of all of us for the communiqué issued by the P5 in Geneva on 4 June and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1172, we condemn the nuclear tests carried out by India on 11 and 13 May 1998 and by Pakistan on 28 May and 30 May. These tests have affected both countries’ relationships with each of us, worsened rather than improved their security environment, damaged their prospects of achieving their goals of sustainable economic development, and run contrary to global efforts towards nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

    2. The negative impact of these tests on the international standing and ambitions of both countries will be serious and lasting. They will also have a serious negative impact on investor confidence. Both countries need to take positive actions directed towards defusing tension in the region and rejoining the international community’s efforts towards non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. Urgent action is needed both to halt an arms race on the Sub-Continent, which would divert resources from urgent economic priorities, and to reduce tension, build confidence and encourage peaceful resolution of the differences between India and Pakistan, so that their peoples may face a better future.

    3. With a view to halting the nuclear and missile arms race on the Sub-Continent, and taking note of the official statements of the Indian and Pakistani Governments that they wish to avoid such an arms race, we consider that India and Pakistan should immediately take the following steps, already endorsed by the United Nations Security Council:

    • stop all further nuclear tests and adhere to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty immediately and unconditionally, thereby facilitating its early entry into force;
    • refrain from weaponisation or deployment of nuclear weapons and from the testing or deployment of missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and enter into firm commitments not to weaponise or deploy nuclear weapons or missiles;
    • refrain from any further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices and participate, in a positive spirit and on the basis of the agreed mandate, in negotiations with other states in the Conference on Disarmament for a Fissile Material Cut-Off Convention with a view to reaching early agreement;
    • confirm their policies not to export equipment, materials and technology that could contribute to weapons of mass destruction or missiles capable of delivering them, and undertake appropriate commitments in that regard.

    We believe that such actions would be strongly in the interest of both countries.

    4. With a view to reducing tension, building confidence and encouraging peaceful resolution of their differences through dialogue, India and Pakistan should:

    • undertake to avoid threatening military movements, cross-border violations, including infiltrations or hot pursuit, or other provocative acts and statements;
    • discourage terrorist activity and any support for it;
    • implement fully the confidence- and security-building measures they have already agreed and develop further such measures;
    • resume without delay a direct dialogue that addresses the root causes of the tension, including Kashmir, through such measures as early resumption of Foreign Secretary level talks, effective use of the hot-line between the two leaders, and realisation of a meeting between Prime Ministers on the occasion of the 10th SAARC Summit scheduled next month;
    • allow and encourage progress towards enhanced Indo-Pakistani economic cooperation, including through a free trade area in South Asia.

    We encourage the development of a regional security dialogue.

    5. We pledge actively to encourage India and Pakistan to find mutually acceptable solutions to their problems and stand ready to assist India and Pakistan in pursuing any of these positive actions. Such assistance might be provided, at the request of both parties, in the development and implementation of confidence- and security-building measures.

    6. The recent nuclear tests by India and Pakistan do not change thedefinition of a nuclear weapon state in the NPT, and therefore, notwithstanding those tests, India and Pakistan do not have the status of nuclear weapon states in accordance with the NPT. We continue to urge India and Pakistan to adhere to the NPT as it stands, without any conditions. We shall continue to apply firmly our respective policies to prevent the export of materials, equipment or technology that could in any way assist programmes in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons or for ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons.

    7. It is our firm view that the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan reinforce the importance of maintaining and strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as the cornerstone of the non- proliferation regime and as the essential foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament. We all, nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states alike, reiterate our determination to fulfil the commitments relating to nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the NPT. These commitments were reaffirmed at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and included the determined pursuit by the nuclear weapon states of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons. We note the progress already made in this direction and welcome the firm intention both of the United States and of the Russian Federation to bring START II into force, and to negotiate and conclude a START III agreement at the earliest possible date. We also note contributions made by other nuclear weapon states to the reductions process. We call upon all states to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty rapidly to ensure its entry into force, and welcome the determination of the member governments of the G8 that have not yet ratified the Treaty to do so at the earliest possible date. We continue to look for the accession to the NPT of the remaining countries which are not yet parties to it.

    8. We call on all the member states of the Conference on Disarmament to agree on the immediate opening of the Cut-Off negotiation at the CD.

    9. Both India and Pakistan face enormous challenges in developing their economies and building prosperity. However, the recent nuclear tests have created an atmosphere of regional instability which will undermine the region’s attractiveness to both foreign and domestic investment, damaging business confidence and the prospects for economic growth. The diversion of their resources to nuclear and other weapons programmes displaces more productive investment and weakens their ability to pursue sound economic policies. It calls into question the commitment of both governments to poverty reduction and undermines the regional cooperation between SAARC countries on social and economic issues. In line with the approach to development set out in the Naples, Lyon, Denver and Birmingham Communiqués, we call on both governments to reduce expenditure that undermines their objective of promoting sound economic policies that will benefit all members of society, especially the poorest, and to otherwise enhance cooperation in South Asia.

    10. We believe it is important that India and Pakistan are aware of the strength of the international community’s views on their recent tests and on these other subjects. Several among us have, on a unilateral basis, taken specific actions to underscore our strong concerns. All countries should act as they see fit to demonstrate their displeasure and address their concerns to India and Pakistan. We do not wish to punish the peoples of India or Pakistan as a result of actions by their governments, and we will therefore not oppose loans by international financial institutions to the two countries to meet basic human needs. We agree, however, to work for a postponement in consideration of other loans in the World Bank and other international financial institutions to India and Pakistan, and to any other country that will conduct nuclear tests.

    11. We pledge to convey the common views of our Governments on these matters to those of India and Pakistan with a view to bringing about early and specific progress in the areas outlined above. We plan to keep developments under review and to continue the process of pursuing the goals on which we are all agreed.