Pakistan has rejected an Indian proposal seeking Islamabad’s inclusion in talks on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) at the next session of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), which is likely to commence in the third week of January.
At present Pakistan is the only hold-out at the CD among 65 countries in talks on the FMCT, a proposed global pact that will ban the production of nuclear bomb making material. India asked Pakistan to join the talks at the recently concluded two-day Pakistan-India talks on conventional and nuclear confidence-building measures (CBMs) and said the proposed treaty could be an important step towards effective nuclear disarmament.
Apart from India coming up with this proposal, Pakistan had also been facing immense pressure from the United States for the last couple of years to sign the FMCT. It was in 2009 that Islamabad decided to block the start of negotiations on the vital treaty in the CD as it was not only advocating a ban on future production of the material used in making nuclear bombs, but also favoured a pact covering the existing stocks of fissile material in the possession of various nuclear states.
“Yes, this proposal came up for discussions from the Indian side during the recently concluded talks on CBMs but Islamabad refused to oblige owing to its stated position on the vital issue that the treaty must cover the existing stocks of fissile material possessed by India and other nuclear states,” said a Pakistani official here on Monday, asking not to be named.
It is strange duplicity of behaviour on the part of US and India to push Pakistan on the issue. While the Indo-US strategic cooperation in the nuclear technology is going to help India to continue its nuclear weapons build up, its conventional capability is also being enhanced many-folds. How can Pakistan lower its guards when the threat is not addressed thru political means. With conventional gap increasing, Pakistan's nuclear threshold will be lowered and any effort to impose FMCT will lower it further thus pushing the region to the brink of nuclear showdown. The US should address the Issue of Kashmir by persuading India to be more accommodating so is it the moral obligation of UN to get its resolution applied. That is the only way to make any worthwhile progress in the context of FMCT
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