Pakistan’s Nuclear Tests Provoke Debate

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —  Marking the second anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests, army ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Sunday that Pakistan and India have to settle their dispute over Kashmir to remove “the threat of a nuclear holocaust.”

The military chief said he has repeatedly offered talks with neighboring India to settle the long-running dispute, which sparked a bitter border battle last summer and has led to two full-scale wars in recent decades.

“We don’t want the people of South Asia to live under the threat of a nuclear holocaust,” Musharraf said. “But India shouldn’t take our offer as a sign of weakness.”

He told a public gathering in the federal capital that Pakistan is not interested in embarking on a nuclear arms race. However, he warned that Pakistan would not be left behind if neighbor India forged ahead with nuclear weapons development.

The speech came exactly two years after Pakistan ran underground nuclear tests in response to Indian tests weeks earlier.

Today, depending on whom you ask in Pakistan, it’s either a safer Asian subcontinent because of the tit-for-tat nuclear explosions--or it’s the likeliest spot for the world’s first nuclear war.

Musharraf says nuclear deterrence has ensured Pakistan’s security and created a strategic balance in a region that has seen three wars in the last 53 years. As recently as last summer, the border dispute over Kashmir--a mountainous region divided between Pakistan and India and claimed in its entirety by both--threatened to escalate into an all-out confrontation.

This week, Musharraf said he didn’t believe either side would be foolish enough to take their nations to the brink of a nuclear war.

But others in Pakistan are not so certain. Some fear that many in Pakistan and in India--where the literacy rate is barely 30%, even less among women--may not realize the effect of a nuclear explosion.

“The . . . consequences of nuclear weapons are too horrible to think of, but in India and Pakistan, most people don’t know about it,” said Mohammed Illyas, who owns a camera shop in the federal capital. “They are emotional. They think of each other as a rival and they want to kill each other even if it means their own death.”

During the last year, Pakistan built monuments to its nuclear capability. Replica ballistic missiles were erected at major intersections. On the outskirts of the federal capital, a giant fiberglass rock was erected to represent Chagai Hills, where the underground explosions took place.

Ahmed Kamal, who runs a roadside business, said Pakistan’s decision to conduct underground nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, made him feel proud.

“We feel safe because now everybody knows about our power, our neighbor knows,” he said.

But analysts worry that unless the two countries begin talking--and quickly--the South Asian subcontinent will be launched on a nuclear arms race.

“The reality of a nuclear South Asia is there and that is not going to go away,” said Dr. Riffat Hussain, a political scientist at Islamabad’s Qaid-e-Azam University.

Both Pakistan and India have said nuclear weapons are a part of their arsenals. Both countries possess ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although neither country is believed to have developed a nuclear warhead. Hussain says they have to start talking before they cross that threshold.

“We have this small window of opportunity now, and if we don’t take advantage of it, we are heading toward deployment and a nuclear arms race,” he said.

But relations between India and Pakistan are hardly conducive to dialogue. India refuses to talk to Pakistan unless it withdraws militant secessionists from Indian Kashmir. Pakistan, meanwhile, denies all involvement in arming or training the militants fighting in the Indian-ruled section of Kashmir.

Aziz Saddiq, a spokesman for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a fierce opponent of nuclear development, said Pakistan is worse off today than two years ago. The economy is in ruins, international pressure has persisted and relations with India not good.

“What have we gained?” he asked. “Nothing. Two years ago everyone knew we had the nuclear capability. We could have not tested, gained economically and internationally from it.”