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Blasts blow up Indo-Pak peace initiative

Even as Pakistan conducted another nuclear test on Saturday in an attempt to overtake India in the atomic race, security analysts and government officials said the face-off has led to the collapse of the peace initiative between the two South Asian rivals on the Kashmir issue.

Indian security and foreign policy officials believe Pakistan is flexing its nuclear muscle vis-a-vis the disputed province of Kashmir.

"Pakistan, like India, has proved its nuclear might. But the real danger is if Islamabad links its nuclear capability with its support to terrorist and mercenary activities in Kashmir," a senior external affairs ministry official told Rediff On The NeT.

He dismissed the prospect of the "nuclear India and Pakistan" resuming their bilateral dialogue in the near future. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan has announced that there is no question of re-opening the peace talks unless India puts Kashmir on the agenda.

But it is unlikely that the Bharatiya Janata Party government -- which has already fine-tuned an aggressive Kashmir policy -- will take any immediate measures to go to the negotiation table with the Nawaz Sharief regime.

Security analysts say Prime Minister Sharief decided to carry out a another nuclear test to prove that "Pakistan has a clear-cut nuclear superiority over India."

According to Commodore Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, there could be two reasons why Pakistan went ahead with a fresh test.

"First, I feel that Pakistan did not receive enough technological data from their so-called five nuclear tests. Second, the new test must have been part of a series of planned tests just like India's," Bhaskar told Rediff On The NeT.

"Now that India and Pakistan have heated up the atmosphere in South Asia, the need of the hour is to show restraint and work for peace with nuclear weapons," he said.

While the nuclear tests have brought in a radically new dimension in Indo-Pak relations, particularly in finding a solution to the Kashmir problem, insiders said Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is being advised by BJP hawks to tighten the screws on Kashmir.

Ever since India conducted its nuclear tests on May 11, senior ministers in the Vajpayee government including Home Minister L K Advani have threatened Pakistan to halt its anti-India policy and stop sponsoring terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

Many now believe that, after weeks of belligerence over nuclear weapons and missiles, it would be rather difficult to re-open the fourth round of secretary-level bilateral dialogue in the near future.

In normal circumstances, the bilateral talks between Indian Foreign Secretary K Raghunath and his Pakistan counterpart Shamshad Ahmed would have been held in August.

The dialogue was basically to review the progress of the proposed inter-country groups on Kashmir, the Siachen conflict, trade, delineation of the maritime boundary in the Kutch area, confidence-building measures and more people-to-people contacts.

In view of what the BJP leadership calls "the altered situation" in the sub-continent after the Indian nuclear tests, sources said many in the party have been advising the government to "retrieve" the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

Mohan Guruswamy, a member of the BJP security think-tank, feels that there is an essential difference between "the Indian bomb" and the "Pakistan bomb."

"Our nuclear programmes are not Pakistan-specific. But Pakistan's efforts to prove its nuclear capability are clearly India-specific," he told Rediff On The NeT, adding that "the Kashmir issue is now linked to the nuclear race."

BJP officials like Guruswamy insist that India's decision to go nuclear was a matter of vital national security, a precaution against Pakistan and a deterrent to ward off China's hegemony in the region.

Asserting that the latest test poses no new threat to the country, K C Pant, chairman of the task force on the National Security Council said, "Our national priority is not in any way to participate in an nuclear arms race in Asia."

"India is not threatened by Pakistan's belligerence on nuclear weapons and we do not propose to lift the moratorium on further nuclear explosions in the country," he told Rediff On The NeT.

While the nuclear race has whipped up a frenzy, MEA officials said India would be prepared to consider a no-war pact with Pakistan if the latter made a new offer.

"We are still undecided how the Vajpayee government will respond if the United Nations proposes a new non-aggression pact between and India and Pakistan," a senior MEA official told Rediff On The NeT.

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