March 22, 2006	Wednesday	Safar 21, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, March 21: In the face of dangers posed by the Indo-US nuclear deal, Pakistan should expand its options and rethink its “open-ended cooperation” in the US-led war on terror. This view was presented by security analysts Shireen Mazari and retired Gen Talat Masood in a public talk on the deal at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad on Tuesday.

“Regional and global compulsions do not allow us to change our foreign policy but we must expand our options,” Gen Masood said suggesting greater cooperation with China.

Pakistan should continue to cooperate in the fields in which the US was willing to assist it “but it should not pursue the war on terror in the way desired by the US”, he advised.

“Should we continue using our army against our own people?” he asked, calling for “a political approach” to the issue.

Washington had long wanted to project India as a global player and the 1998 nuclear tests by India opened “a window of opportunity” for them to negotiate a strategic partnership which the US wanted “to fight radical Islam and to contain China”, he said.

However, because of their economic relations with China, both the partners were playing down the strategic consideration regarding China.

Gen Masood expected the US Congress to amend the country’s non-proliferation law to exempt India from its application. But the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group was not likely to do same “immediately”.

“It cannot be a matter of exception. The whole approach is fundamentally flawed. There has to be a common energy policy,” he said.

By dehyphenating Pakistan from India on the nuclear issue, the US had created “serious implications” for the peace process and the strategic balance in the region, he said. The deal would make rely more on its nuclear deterrence.

“You cannot ignore the weaknesses of an ally when it suits you and present them as barriers when you want to deny the ally equal treatment,” said the general referring to President Bush’s remark that Pakistan had a “different history” than India.

Dr Mazari was more scathing in her criticism of the Indo-US nuclear deal. She said it undermined the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the US’s own 1978 non-proliferation law and the strategic stability in South Asia.

She reminded that India pledged only to accept “voluntary” safeguards and could withdraw any nuclear facility from the list of 14 it has agreed to put under safeguards.

Indo-US strategic cooperation began in 1992 and, but for Pakistan’s counter tests, India would have been accepted as a nuclear weapons state after its tests in 1998, she said.

Ms Mazari said “the impeccable record” of India in nuclear non-proliferation cited by the US to justify its decision to extend nuclear cooperation to the country “does not gel with facts”. She said India had helped the nuclear programmes of Iraq and Iran.

She said the US decision to breach the non-proliferation regime for India encouraged Russia to rush with nuclear fuel supplies to India to the chagrin of Washington. France and Britain have also offered nuclear technology to India.

All these favours would free India to use the fissile material from its unsafeguarded facilities to produce more nuclear weapons, increasing the security threat to Pakistan.

She called for a diplomatic offensive against the US’s discriminatory nuclear policy.

“It (discrimination) is not a perception but a reality. We have to see where we are headed,” she said calling for putting “temporary brakes” on cooperation in the US war on terror.

“It is not that we cannot stand pressure. We are not as weak as we think we are,” she said.