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Anti-nuke meet in Pakistan cautions about accidental nuclear conflict

A meeting of anti-nuke campaigners in Lahore has warned about an accidental nuclear war between India and Pakistan, doubting claims that command and control systems in both nations are in safe hands.

The participants, some of them leading academics in Pakistani and North American institutions, said it was a ''myth'' that nuclear weapons are not meant to be used.

Parvez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, termed as ''stupid'' Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz's statement that an accidental nuclear war was impossible because Pakistan has a ''perfect command and control system.''

''My fear of an accidental war increases each time I talk to policy makers,'' he told the weekend workshop which was sponsored by the Colombo-based Regional Centre for Strategic Studies and a Pakistani publishing house. Prof Hoodbhoy also questioned the need for Pakistan to have countered the Indian nuclear tests in May.

He also spoke of the need to ''understand a whole range of issues, from the implications of the nuclear tests for Pakistan's economy, to the future of the sub-continent, to why the tests were initially received with jubilation.''

A H Nayyar, a Pakistani scientist at the university's physics department also criticised the Pakistani government for the nuclear tests and said these had disproved Islamabad's claim that its policies were no longer ''reactive'' to New Delhi's.

''Pakistan's policies have always been reactive to India's. It now claims to have de-linked its policies from India's, but this is not apparent,'' he said.

With both nations competing with each other to make ''smaller, smarter,'' nuclear weapons, there is a greater risk of an unintended nuclear war, Dr Nayyar pointed out.

Speakers also expressed concern that the South Asian nuclear arms race was diverting national funds and energies from efforts to raise living standards of the majority poor in the two countries. Moreover, it was promoting ''jingoism which is affecting the psyche of the peoples of both countries,'' Dr Nayyar said.

He advised India and Pakistan to follow the examples of South Africa, Brazil and Argentina which have abandoned their nuclear programmes. In addition, there are some 30 nations which have advanced nuclear technology and could weaponise but ''choose not to'', he said.

Sunil Shah, a US-based doctor, termed nuclear weapons as the ''ultimate anti-democratic weapon,'' for they ''target people who had not volunteered to be a part of war.''

Listing the myths associated with nuclear weapons, Hoodbhoy said having a nuclear weapon is no great achievement. While this may have been true 50 years ago, ''now all the technology and knowledge is commonly available.''

Secondly, there is no such thing as a 'minimal deterrent', he said. Russia had accumulated 30,000 nuclear weapons, and the United States, 40,000, by the time the Cold War ended, he pointed out.

Another misconception is that nuclear weapons will never be used. He recalled a discussion he had ten years ago with senior Pakistani military officers who were preparing a nuclear strategy paper.

One of them told Hoodbhoy that Pakistan would use a nuclear weapon if it felt that its army was about to lose a conventional war, or if the nation's major urban centres were about to be run over by the Indian army.

When Prof Hoodbhoy tried to explain that using nuclear weapons was a recipe for mutually assured destruction, he was met with the answer: ''Professor, you are very rational. But we are men of ghairat (honour). The Pakistani army will not be defeated.''

UNI

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