WASHINGTON: North Korea has ratcheted up tensions on the Korean peninsula in two ways — both by telling international nuclear inspectors to pack their bags and by briefly but apparently deliberately violating the 1953 armistice with several armed forays into the Demilitarized Zone.

On Friday the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief said he had received a letter from North Korea’s atomic energy director telling him the IAEA inspectors’ mission was over.

Ri Je Son said the country had lifted the freeze on its plutonium-based nuclear programme because the United States had virtually broken off the 1994 agreement that obligated North Korea to shut it down, according to a translation of a North Korean radio report.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said from the nuclear watchdog’s Vienna headquarters that he had asked North Korea to confirm its commitment to nuclear safeguards and allow IAEA inspectors to stay.

“Together with the loss of cameras and seals, the departure of inspectors would practically bring to an end our ability to monitor DPRK’s nuclear programme or assess its nature,” ElBaradei declared in a statement. “This is one step further away from defusing the crisis.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker told United Press International that North Korea’s actions were aimed at “advancing its nuclear weapon capability”.

Calling Pyongyang’s decision to expel the IAEA inspectors “yet another violation of the IAEA safeguards agreements”, Reeker said: “North Korea’s actions in the past several days belie its announced justification to produce electricity. These actions are not designed to produce electricity. They are rather to advance North Korea’s weapon capability.”

He said the United States remained in close contact with the IAEA and with friends and allies, including South Korea and Japan.

“We call upon the DPRK to reverse its current course, to take all steps necessary to come into compliance with the IAEA safeguards agreement and to eliminate nuclear weapons programme in a verifiable manner.”

In what several Korean experts told United Press International was a related signal, North Korean soldiers apparently carried light machineguns in and out of the Demilitarized Zone several days this month.

The move is not unprecedented, but the openness with which they conducted their exercises is new, sources said.

“North Korea violates on a very regular basis all aspects of the 1953 armistice agreement” that ended the Korean War, said Balbina Hwang of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. “But given everything else that is going on, I think it’s definitely part of a calculated effort to up the ante, to test the resolve of South Korea and the United States.”

Pyongyang is “doing everything it can to poke the United States,” said another Asia policy expert, Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. “It’s tactical, but it’s also serious.”

Nevertheless, a signal does not necessarily mean a provocation — a distinction the North Koreans have shown they are masters at crafting. For example, the soldiers carried type-73 machine guns, not heavy weapons, and apparently took them back out with them each day on Dec 13 and Dec 16-20, according to the UN Command in Seoul.

“There’s a lot of theatre that goes on in the DMZ. I wouldn’t get carried away about that at this point,” said Joel Wit of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The inspectors are another story. My hunch is that the North Koreans mean business this time.”

An IAEA spokeswoman said that for the moment two inspectors were still at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, about 90kms north of the capital Pyongyang. However, “we can’t force inspectors” on a host country, and “they will have to leave” if North Korea indeed tells them to, Melissa Fleming told UPI.

Ri’s letter reportedly says the North had decided to resume its plutonium-based nuclear programme because the United States cut off heavy oil shipments, having already included the country in President George Bush’s “axis of evil” and — according to a translation by the British Broadcasting Corporation — North Korea is “a target for its (America’s) pre-emptive nuclear attack”.

The United States agreed to give North Korea 500,000 tons of heavy oil annually in exchange for the latter shutting down its Soviet-style nuclear reactors, whose waste can be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium.

Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea is also to receive, at international expense, two light-water reactors that do not produce plutonium but are currently at least five years behind schedule.

In October Pyongyang admitted it had a separate but equally provocative programme to enrich uranium. While uranium-based programmes are not addressed directly under the Agreed Framework, the United States declared North Korea in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the agreement and suspended its energy aid.

Two weeks ago North Korea said it was compelled to replace the energy sources and thus would restart its plutonium-based reactors. In the last week technicians have dismantled IAEA monitoring equipment and unsealed their mothballed facilities.

On Tuesday they began to move fresh rods out of storage and into the reactor building at Yongbyon.

“The reprocessing facility at Yongbyon is irrelevant to the DPRK ability to produce electricity,” ElBaradei said on Wednesday. “The DPRK has no current legitimate peaceful use for plutonium, given the status of its nuclear fuel cycle.”

The IAEA director general called North Korea’s actions “tantamount to nuclear brinkmanship”.

The Yongbyon reactor is very small, only five megawatts in its rating of possible power output. At the time it shut down its programme, North Korea had at least two larger reactors under construction that were rated at 50 and 200 megawatts.

Spokeswoman Fleming said IAEA was consulting its board of governors and member states. “But if you think about the situation with Iraq, you know it’s very difficult to make any assessment of nuclear capability without inspectors present,” she said.

AT the recent Safma (South Asian Free Media Association) conference in Lahore, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, for the umpteenth time, stressed his coalition’s (MMA’s) unanimous demand addressed to President Gen Pervez Musharraf to ‘relinquish’ the office of the COAS and become president ‘through the constitutional process.’ Like him, MMA chief Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani (JUP) and deputy chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad (JI), with equal force, stress their coalition’s unflinching stand on the constitutional transformation of the status of the president from the commander of the military forces to the civilian head of the state in the fullest sense of the term.

The president on his part, on more occasions than one, in his public statements, has been categorical about his intent not to take off his general’s uniform. ‘You know the importance of uniform,’ he would unhesitatingly stress. For the uniform is not only a soldier’s shining armour but also his badge of authority: his licence to kill in the line of duty and not only to get away with it but also honoured for that.

The question about the status and validity of a soldier’s uniform arises only when he combines the khaki with his ‘grey flannel suit’ and rotates peaked cap with the ‘bowler’ in a dual civil-military capacity as a head of the state and army chief.

From day one, in Pakistan, military uniform has not been just another change of clothing, but a mark of unmatched distinction and recognized authority ensconced in two major factors. First, as a vital part of the geographical spread of (West) Pakistan in Punjab and the NWFP, designated by the British as the tap-root of (military) recruitment and their inmates officially classified as scions of ‘martial races.’ Secondly, the outbreak of the India-Pakistan war in Kashmir barely a couple of months after Independence helping the military emerge as the sole protector and defender of the realm.

The Kashmir war of 1947-48, impacted the fledgling state of Pakistan more deeply at the core than India with a well developed state structure inherited from the British. In the ensuing administrative vacuum and political (civilian) instability, the only stabilising and functional force available was the military establishment.

In spite of its own unavoidable share of disarray and deprivation in the aftermath of an indecently rushed partition, the military establishment was still relatively better off. It was, in any case, a going concern, materially strong and organizationally sound enough to surpass all other state and public institutions. The government was thus left to assert its will mainly with the help of the armed forces; and the uniform became the symbol and the shield of our national security.

Hardly ever before, however, the question of a head of the state in uniform became so head-on an issue personally between the incumbent and the political forces of the day as between the MMA and General Musharraf. All other parties, including the PPP, sitting in the opposition have all but accepted the two-fold status of the army chief as the head of the state as a part of practical politics.

Without questioning the demand of the MMA, in principle, its status as a part of our national history remains open to debate. Musharraf’s three predecessors and enforcers of martial law, viz, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, General A.M. Yahya Khan and General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, all wore their multiple hats as Army Chief, CMLA, Supreme Commander and president (strictly in that order, Yahya would insist) without any significant opposition from political forces.

They sat astride their high horse in full view of a reticent if not exactly an admiring people. Ayub, the initiator of martial law and its most consummate practitioner, relinquished his army command to General Musa, a humble and self-effacing man of proven personal loyalty. Not long afterwards, however, Ayub had himself promoted to the exalted non-retiring, life-time rank of field marshal to prove the ‘importance of uniform.’ He carried his exquisitely crafted field marshal’s baton with a great deal of style, spectacular effect and robust confidence for practically a whole decade until his eligibility to contest elections as a ‘serving soldier’ under his own handmade 1962 constitution was challenged in a court of law.

The court ruled that an officer of the rank of field marshal ‘on half-pay’ was eligible to contest the elections. He contested and won the elections through an electoral college of 80,000 Basic Democrats — 40,000 each from East and West Pakistan — to rule the country unchallenged for another seven years.

In March 1969, Ayub repudiated his own constitution by relinquishing power in favour of the army chief Yahya Khan in place of the National Assembly Speaker Abdul Jabbar Khan, as provided under the constitution. The point to note is that he would not take off his military uniform as the only source of his authority even after legitimizing his rule through a referendum — essentially a one-horse race.

Came Yahya to beat his predecessor and successor in his Race to the Swift. His short-lived interragnum saw the end of the united Pakistan in the aftermath of a humiliating military defeat and the loss of half the country in the bargain. Even before any demand could be addressed to him to take off his uniform, he was forced out of the army.

Yahya’s immediate successor, President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a blue-blooded civilian, showed a strange fascination for the uniform. He had one custom tailored for him and his party high command, with high striped collars of their Jodhpur-style tunic — the number and colour of the stripes — in gold and silver — denoting the rank of the wearer. The PPP under Bhutto, in the party uniform, at least, reflected a definite pro-military bias.

General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto’s protege and executioner, not only clung to his general’s uniform as his armoured shield, but also as a glamourous appendage. He added a lot of brass even to the workaday wear and had the camouflage fatigues virtually mothballed. He would never part with his Armour Corps silvery chain stranding his two breast pockets. He died in uniform literally with his boots on in an air crash.

The nexus between the soldier and his uniform is the same as between the man and his shadow. The one can be separated only when either one or the other is lost or the light goes out to plunge the stage into darkness.

The point now is, if General Musharraf is acceptable at all in the emerging civilian set up, what’s the big deal if he continues to stay in uniform exactly like his three uniformed predecessors.

Might it not be wise first to firm up the civilian base and then tell the army chief to shed his shining armour?

The writer is a retired army brigadier

AS one experienced the irritating, familiar car parking problems at the Country and Golf Club in Phase 8 of the “impressive” Defence Housing Authority during one of the weddings there during the week, many thoughts relating to the futuristic aspects of the Sindh capital came to mind. Not just car parking space; will there be enough space for the all weddings, valimas, menhdis, and other ceremonies that society now wishes to have, regardless of costs and social consequences. It is all spilling on to the roads, and the roads have no capacity. That brings in the town planning, not to mention the poor civic sense that Karachiites have, irrespective of where they live in the city. Seen the educated rich misbehave?

Before one focuses on the city’s challenges in this context, let me look at the posh affluent, developed part of Karachi, that broadly speaking, lies in and around the Ittehad avenue. Look at the spacious lovely clubs that have come up there; the Marina Club, the Creek Club, the Area 51, the Carlton Hotel, and the club that has been mentioned at the very outset. There may be other places one doesn’t know of, and there may be many others coming up. There is a lot of land that is still waiting to be built upon. Sensibly? Environmentally correct?

Now these clubs and hotels have apparently also come up as favourite spots for those who are entitled to them, or can afford them, to host their weddings and valimas, not to mention fashion and musical shows, and other such cultural events. So far so good, even though there is much to wonder at the way in which there is a display of opulence and vulgar extravagance; and which is in stark contrast to the rest of the city. There is much in such places to highlight and underline the different uneven income groups that this society has, and which when stretched fairly as a context, it makes you contemplate and imagine the disturbing visions of poverty of the city. Anybody’s guess on how the rich and the powerful are behaving.

So with these clubs and the hotel fully booked with their wedding and valima schedules, it is significant to note that there is often grossly inadequate parking space, with private cars and some hired coaches all parked, (double parked too) on the road, traffic jams result. Two thoughts then come to mind. What is the quality of town planning that is being done in the new, posh residential-commercial areas where there is no paucity of resources, a handicap that exists in the poorer sections of Karachi. How realistic is the town planning? The other point that comes through is the absolute inadequacy, in fact appalling shortage of public transport in the city. In the Ittehad Avenue area, in the wedding context, there were seen on at least two nights no private taxis, no public transport, only new shining cars in a majority, reflecting the fact that those wanting to buy new cars these days are in a long waiting queue. Strange when you look at some of the economic problems that people face. A shortage of new cars, and a waiting time of months at times! No embarrassment please.

With this kind of a turnout of cars in these newly-developed areas of the city, it is obvious that there are fears. Fears that no real lessons have been learnt by the new generation of town planners from the experiences of areas like PECHS and the adjoining housing societies, or Gulshan-i-Iqbal, or Gulistan-i-Jauhar, and even Federal B Area and its adjoining areas. Fears that in the years ahead these posh areas of today will be only marginally better than what the other parts of the city will be like.

Let us refer to two developed areas of the city, one of them being Zamzama Boulevard, a kind of a fashion statement of Karachi. Look at the narrow streets in this place, and try and imagine the parking problems alone that are coming up; that exist even today. It is not a particularly comfortable feeling that one has in this area. There is an environmental suffocation that I have, like in some of the backward areas of the city, or even in downtown Saddar. And one cause here too are the cars. The other is the shopping area off Khayaban-i- Shamsheer.

This reflects in a way the absence of public transport that Karachi has had all its life. News that the city is to get new large buses doesn’t bring true cheer to many of us. It makes one wonder about the roads that we have, the congestion and suffocation that there is on them and the frequent traffic jams, that surface, betraying the lack of vision that the city town planners have had all these years. Foreign educated town planners too so many of them. What a let down, dear citizens.

Somewhat strange that the city is still not truly moving towards a mass transit system, commensurate with the size of the population that it has. Perhaps it never will and it never can. Perhaps it is destined to have a private car system for its enormous transport needs. And when that happens, which is what will happen, from the look of things unfolding on the canvass, chaos will result. New buildings, plazas, clubs, hotels, and no parking lots. Only chaos.

What else is unfolding on the city’s canvass? A great deal is happening. Politically, as well. It should be interesting to see what lies ahead in the New Year, and what sort of changes take place in the quality of life that Karachi has. With a new provincial government coming up, a city government trying to meet the demands of a population growing, inconsiderate, divided, dejected and cynical generally, a democracy that is tailored and tutored in more ways than what meets the eye, 2003 could spring a few surprises. Funny surprises?

That is the wider outer context; within the city, there is of course a wedding season that is in full swing with all the menus that family budgets may or may not be able to afford. A wedding season that is oblivious to the social implications and moral consequences as is the town planning to the cultural growth of a healthy people.

Come to think of it, again, there may be nothing wrong with all those new cars. But somehow the heart says that there is an artificiality in the prosperity that is being trumpeted by economic experts, says one citizen who is forever worried about the social imbalance in the Sindh capital. Look at the fact that 41 cars were hijacked or stolen in 48 hours, including Christmas day. Someone said they want to ban beggars in Karachi! Joking!