UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has assured the world that it was forced to develop nuclear programme to defend itself after India initiated the nuclear race in South Asia with a series of tests.

“Pakistan had been obliged to develop nuclear capability for self-defence and deterrence,” Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry told a UN meeting on Wednesday evening.

India conducted the first nuclear test – called the “Smiling Buddha” – in 1974 and followed it up with a series of five tests at the Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range in May 1998.

Pakistan, which launched its nuclear programme soon after the first Indian tests, conducted six underground tests on May 28 and 30, 1998.

Foreign secretary says Pakistan supports the ‘goal of elimination of nuclear weapons through a global, verifiable and non-discriminatory legal instrument’

At an event organised on the sidelines of the 70th United Nations General Assembly to commemorate the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Mr Chaudhry described the Pakistani decision to develop its own nuclear programme as an “existential choice that the country made to preserve strategic stability in South Asia”.

He said that Pakistan was not against nuclear disarmament but it should be “non-discriminatory, universal and comprehensive”.

Like other nations, Pakistanis too support the “goal of elimination of nuclear weapons through a global, verifiable and non-discriminatory legal instrument”, he added. Mr Chaudhry said that Pakistan’s nuclear policy continued to be guided by the principles of restraint and responsibility.

In his address to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also assured the world that Pakistan was a responsible nuclear weapon state and it would continue to support the objectives of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Earlier, the Pakistani foreign secretary met Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Yukiya Amano and assured him that Pakistan gave the highest priority to safety and security of its nuclear installations.

“All of our nuclear power plants and research reactors are under IAEA safeguards,” he said.

At the beginning of the UNGA session, UN Secre­tary-General Ban Ki-moon reminded the participants that efforts for a Compre­hensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty which had begun nearly two decades ago but it had still not entered into force.

Mr Ban urged world leaders to demonstrate the necessary political will to usher in a nuclear-weapon-free world.—M.H. & A.I.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2015

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