ISLAMABAD, Aug 22: India’s minimum credible nuclear deterrent concept is dynamic, visiting Indian academician Dr Swaran Singh said in an in-house meeting at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) on Tuesday.

“No numbers can be put on it. ‘Credible’ means you have dynamism on the upper side, limited primarily by lack of resources,” he said when asked what a minimum nuclear arsenal would be for India.

Dr Singh, who is associate professor in the Jawaharlal Nehru University and an expert on security issues and China, spoke on Nuclear Command and Control in South Asia, asserting that “all nuclear weapons are political weapons”.

India’s nuclear doctrine was clearly expressed but not that of Pakistan, he said, adding “ambiguity is important when a nation is not openly nuclear and transparency when it is”.

India formed its National Command Authority (NCA) in January 2003, three years after Pakistan did. Though a political-military forum, he said, the Pakistani NCA was “controlled, maintained and dominated by the military leadership”.

As such he found the provision in Pakistani NCA that the prime minister will take all nuclear decisions “incongruous”. It also did not provide for a successor in the event the command authority was “decapitated” by a first strike.

“India does not have second strike capability which its ‘no first use’ nuclear doctrine demands,” he said.

In contrast, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons “have no confusion where to go” as it did not subscribe to ‘no first use’, said Dr Singh.

A Pakistani participant in the meeting however reminded him that “that does not mean we subscribe to first use”.

Dr Singh said China was “concerned but not worried” about the India-US deal on nuclear cooperation. Beijing was concerned “how it would impinge on its security”.

“That is perfectly normal. We (Indians) will be worried if President Bush spent seven days in Pakistan,” he remarked.

“We too,” intoned his host Dr Shireen Mazari, the ISSI chief.

Dr Singh downplayed the significance of the civil nuclear cooperation agreement between India and the US. “We will move very slowly on that. I’m very sure of that,” he said.

“Far more important is the defence (cooperation) agreement between the two nations. It is more substantial,” he said.

But when questioned about a Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system that the agreement envisages, Dr Singh said: “I don’t think it is moving anywhere at all”.

And the reasons he gave were that the American research into BMD had achieved just 50 per cent success and developing BMD will be “a clear invitation to an arms race with China”.