Foreign Correspondence

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India and Pakistan escalate nuclear race
Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick in Washington
May 30, 2009

SOME TIME next year, at a tightly guarded site south of its capital, Pakistan will be ready to start
churning out a new stream of plutonium for its nuclear arsenal, which will eventually include warheads
for ballistic missiles and cruise missiles capable of being fired from ships, submarines or aircraft.

About 1600 kilometres to the south-west, engineers in India are designing cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads, relying partly on Russian missile-design assistance. India is also trying to equip its Agni ballistic missiles with such warheads and to deploy them on submarines. Its rudimentary missile-defence capability is slated for a big upgrade next year.

The detonation of a North Korean nuclear device on Monday has renewed concerns over Pyongyang's efforts to build up its atomic arsenal. At the same time, experts who have tracked developments in South Asia have grown increasingly worried over the rapid growth of the region's older nuclear programs, in part because of the risk that weapons or weapons material could fall into the hands of terrorists.

India and Pakistan see their nuclear programs as vital points of leverage in an arms race that has begun to take on the pace and diversity, although not the size, of US-Russian nuclear competition during the Cold War, US intelligence and proliferation experts say. Pakistani authorities said they were modernising their facilities, not expanding their program; Indian officials declined to comment.

While India and Pakistan say their actions are defensive, the consequence of their efforts has been to boost the quantity of materials being produced and the number of times they must be moved around, as well as the training of experts in highly sensitive skills.

"More vulnerabilities. More stuff in production. More stuff in transit" when it is more vulnerable to theft, said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, formerly the CIA's top official on weapons of mass destruction and the Energy Department's director of intelligence during the George W. Bush administration. US experts also worry that as the size of the programs grows, chances increase that a rogue scientist or military officer will try to sell nuclear parts or know-how, as the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Former Indian government officials say efforts are under way to improve and test a powerful thermo-
nuclear warhead, even as the country adds to a growing array of aircraft, missiles and submarines that launch them.

"Delivery system-wise, India is doing fine," said Bharat Karnad, a former member of India's National Security Advisory Board and a professor of national security studies at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research. India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998; India first detonated an atomic bomb in 1974.

US officials say narrow appeals to the two countries to slow their weapons work will probably fail. "We have to think of dealing with the South Asian problem not on a purely regional basis, but in the context of a more global approach," Gary Samore, the senior White House non-proliferation adviser, said after a speech to the Arms Control Association last week.

Some experts worry, however, that the US may not have the luxury of waiting to negotiate a treaty that would curtail the global production of fissile materials - a pact that Barack Obama says he hopes to complete during his first term as President.

A recent US intelligence report warned of the dangers associated
with potential attacks on nuclear weapons-related shipments inside Pakistan.

Lieutenant-General Michael Maples, director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, told senators days before his retirement in March that "Pakistan continues to develop its nuclear infrastructure, expand nuclear weapons stockpiles, and seek more advanced warheads and delivery systems".

Experts said General Maples was referring to the expected completion next year of Pakistan's second heavy-water reactor at its Khushab nuclear complex 160 kilometres south-west of Islamabad, which will produce new spent nuclear fuel containing plutonium for use in nuclear arms.

"When Khushab is done, they'll be able to make a significant number of new bombs," Mr Mowatt-Larssen said. In contrast, "it took them roughly 10 years to double the number of nuclear weapons from roughly 50 to 100." A third heavy-water reactor is also under construction at Khushab, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

Before it can be used in weaponry, the plutonium must be separated from the fuel rods at a highly guarded nuclear plant near Rawalpindi, about 160 kilometres north-east of Khushab. Satellite images show a substantial expansion at the complex between 2002 and 2006, reflecting a long-standing Pakistani desire to replace weapons fuelled by enriched uranium with plutonium-based weapons.

While Pakistan's nuclear program has lately attracted the most worry, because of the close proximity to the capital of
Taliban insurgents, many US experts say that it should not be considered in isolation from India's own nuclear expansion.

Some experts say a civil nuclear co-operation agreement that Mr Bush signed with India last October
benefits its weapons programs, because it sanctions India's importation of uranium and lets the military
draw on enriched uranium produced by eight reactors that might otherwise be needed for civil power.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/india-and-pakistan-escalate-nuclear-race-20090529-bq7z.html?page=-1