October 19, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 1, 1422

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18: Pakistan called on the international community to dissuade India not to exploit the current situation by launching “pre-emptive strikes” against Pakistan in its “narrow selfish desire” to secure concessions on Kashmir.

Addressing the UN General Assembly’s debate on international peace and security on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations at Geneva Munir Akram said India was exploiting the war against terrorism in Afghanistan to embark upon a course of “adventurism or blackmail” against Pakistan.

Warning that any attack on Pakistan by India would be met by fierce response, Mr Akram said that “the aim of peace, stability and mutual restraint in South Asia will remain elusive so long as our eastern neighbour maintains its quest for a ‘great power role’ and domination over its neighbours.”

Saying that the new international paradigm also offers an opportunity to build a new and stable security architecture for South Asia, Akram outlined Pakistan’s concept of a ‘strategic restraint’ regime involving nuclear restraint, conventional arms balance and a political mechanism for the resolution of mutual disputes and conflicts especially Kashmir.

Akram said that President General Pervez Musharraf has demonstrated that he is prepared to go the extra mile to extend the hand of friendship to India.”He took the initiative once again last week to telephone Prime Minister Vajpayee to commiserate with him over the recent terrorist attack in Srinagar and to again invite him to visit Pakistan.”

He said that Pakistan believes “while a bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan on Kashmir is essential, it is not a sufficient condition to resolve the dispute. Bilateral negotiations between the two countries have never yielded an agreement, since India has always tried to use its larger size to impose unequal solutions on Kashmir. Akram said that the maintenance of a conventional balance between Pakistan and India is vital to ensure nuclear stability in the region.

“During the past decade, Pakistanis conventional capabilities were considerably eroded due to one-sided sanctions while our neighbour has been relentlessly pursuing a major conventional arms buildup. Almost all its military assets are deployed against Pakistan.”

Mr Akram observed “the aim of peace, stability and mutual restraint, in South Asia will remain elusive so long as our eastern neighbour maintains its quest for a ‘great power role’ and domination over its neighbours.

Saying that Pakistan will not accept hegemony from within or outside South Asia, he underscored that “we are prepared for cooperation as sovereign equals, in accordance with the new realities of a world where the principal national objectives of States can be achieved through economic and political cooperation, rather than military conquest or regional or global domination.”

Emphasizing the threat of a nuclear conflict in South Asia, Mr Akram said that “to promote nuclear restraint and prevent the use of nuclear weapons, Pakistan and India could agree to:

1) formalize their respective unilateral nuclear test moratoriums, perhaps through a bilateral treaty;

2) not operationally weaponise nuclear capable missile systems;

3) not operationally deploy nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, and to keep them on de-alert;

4) formalize the previous understanding to provide prior and adequate notification of flight tests of missiles;

5) observe a moratorium on the acquisition, deployment or development of Anti-ballistic missile systems; 6) implement further confidence-building and transparency measures to reduce the risk of the use of nuclear weapons by miscalculation or accident;

7) open discussions on the nuclear security doctrines of the two countries with a view to forestalling an all out nuclear arms race;

8) an agreement on non-use of force, including the non-use of nuclear weapons.