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India, Pak clash at UN arms talks

Pakistan and India clashed at the United Nations' disarmament body today after Islamabad's envoy said that India's new draft nuclear doctrine would create a 'huge arsenal' of land-based, sea-based and air-based nuclear forces.

In his speech to the forum in Geneva, Pakistani ambassador Munir Akram said the document had indicated that India was ''about to embark on a further and even more dangerous escalation in the nuclear and conventional arms build-up.''

''Thus, despite the best endeavours made by Pakistan for strategic restraint, India is likely to go ahead with the deployment and operationalisation of its nuclear weapons and delivery systems,'' Akram said. ''This will be a huge arsenal.''

He called for immediate resumption of bilateral talks with India and urged the international community to ''speak out against the Indian nuclear intentions, to arrest this danger and to reverse it and help us to resolve the underlying problem of Kashmir without which peace is unlikely to prevail in South Asia.''

Akram's speech to the Conference on Disarmament drew immediate fire from Savitri Kunadi, India's envoy to the 66-member state body, the world's only multilateral negotiating arms forum.

''There is no change in the Indian position on the doctrine of minimum credible (nuclear) deterrence and its elements as stated in the CD and other fora in the past,'' she said.

UNI

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