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US sets specific condition to lift sanctions

C K Arora in Washington

The Bill Clinton administration has set a specific condition, saying India and Pakistan had to disavow nuclear weapons and put their installations under international inspection before expecting high technology and other facilities from the United States and other Western nations.

''Until India and Pakistan disavow nuclear weapons and accept safeguards on all their nuclear activities, they will continue to forfeit the full recognition and benefits that accrue to members in good standing of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty),'' says Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.

In an article in the coming issue of the Foreign Affairs magazine, Talbott, who has been conducting a non-proliferation dialogue with the two countries, says, ''The United States must remain committed to the long-range goal of universal adherence to the NPT. It cannot concede, even by implication, that India and Pakistan have by their tests established themselves as nuclear-weapons states with all the rights and privileges enjoyed by parties to the NPT such as full international help in developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.''

Talbott said, ''To relent would break faith with those states that have forsworn a capability they could have acquired. Moreover, it might inadvertently provide an incentive for other countries to blast their way into the ranks of the nuclear-weapons states.''

At the same time, if India and Pakistan are willing to move toward the international mainstream in the way they define and defend their interests -- even if they remain for the foreseeable future outside the NPT -- their relations with the United States and other members of the international community could improve substantially, he adds.

Talbott says lifting sanctions would be only one component of a return to the process of transforming the relationship, which was among the first casualties of the May nuclear tests.

In conducting parallel diplomatic dialogues with India and Pakistan over the past nine months, he points out, ''The United States has taken into account both governments' conceptions of their own national interests. The Clinton administration does not expect either country to alter or constrain its defence programmes simply because we have asked it to.

''The essence of the case the administration is that they can meet their security requirements as we have heard them define them without further testing nuclear weapons, without producing more fissile material, and without deploying nuclear-capable missiles -- and that, conversely, they will undermine their security unless they move quickly and boldly to bring under control the action-reaction cycle between them.''

Against that backdrop, he says the United States is encouraging India and Pakistan to take five practical steps that would help avoid a destabilising nuclear and missile competition, as well as more generally reduce tensions on the subcontinent and bolster global non-proliferation.

These are banning further test and production of fissile material, exercising restraint in the development and deployment of missiles and aircraft capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction, tightening export controls on sensitive materials and technologies that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction and strengthening India-Pakistan dialogue.

UNI

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