Chinese arms for Pakistan

Shravan Krushna Pratipada Kaliyug Varsha 5112

By: G Parthasarathy

While attention in India has been focussed on China’s determination to sell two nuclear power reactors to Pakistan, other developments in the all ‘All Weather Friendship’ between our northern and western neighbours, having serious implications, have gone unnoticed.

For the first time, a Chinese fighter aircraft, the JF-17, set to be assembled in Pakistan and flown by a Pakistani Air Force crew, was displayed at the world’s largest air show in Farnborough. Pakistan’s Air Force is to be equipped with 250 JF-17 fighters, together with 30 J-10 fighter aircraft designed in Israel.

Symbolically, China was showing to the world that it could not only provide fighter aircraft at very low costs, but was prepared to do so with Pakistan as a global partner. For over two decades now, India has been trying to produce a ‘Light Combat Aircraft’, but has been unable to do produce one for induction into its Air Force. The JF-17 is a variant of the MiG-29 and built with Russian collaboration.

The J-10 is a replica of the Israeli designed Lavi fighter — a variant of the American F-16. Why is it that our worthy defence bureaucracy, which has been fighting shy of following a realistic pattern of weapons development like the Chinese, has not produced a single worthwhile weapons system which we can use and export like the Chinese are doing? Any answers, Mr AK Antony?

China has just supplied Pakistan with two F-22P frigates and is set to supply two more by 2013. Pakistan’s Naval Chief, Admiral Noman Bashir (brother of his country’s Foreign Secretary), paying his fourth visit to China in the past year, indicated on July 22 that Pakistan hopes to buy bigger ships with more firepower from China, such as, 4,000-ton class frigates. He added, “Pakistan has proposed the development of strategic maritime cooperation with China in both military and commercial sectors.”

One of his accompanying officials told the China Daily: “The friendship between Pakistan and China is greater than the Himalayas and deeper than the ocean. Pakistan’s strategic location in the Arabian Sea and its long coastline means its contribution to missions of China’s Navy.

 We can provide facilities, ports, logistics and maintenance, among other things, to the Chinese Navy.” Shortly after the visit of former Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji to Pakistan in 2001, President Pervez Musharraf had made it clear that in the event of tensions with India, the Chinese Navy would be positioned in the Gwadar Port, being built with Chinese assistance.

These developments are taking place at a time when an assertive China is set to challenge US power worldwide and particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where the US has alliance relationships with a number of countries, like South Korea and Japan.

Not only is China strengthening its Navy to militarily assert its territorial claims on maritime boundaries with Malaysia, Philippines, Japan and South Korea, but it is also challenging the presence of the American Pacific Fleet in the South China Sea and in the Yellow Sea.

The Chinese have introduced new concepts in international relations by claiming foreign ships cannot enter waters in their neighbourhood, even if they are outside Chinese territorial waters, by describing these areas close to their shores as “waters of China’s interests,” or as being within “China’s sphere of influence”.

While China’s many apologists in India would argue that China’s increasing moves in our Indian Ocean neighbourhood are merely to safeguard its energy security, it would be naive for India to ignore the growing Sino-Pakistan maritime nexus and measures it is undertaking for its maritime security.

China’s international credibility has been seriously undermined by its efforts to bypass the Nuclear Suppliers Group in its anxiety to sell nuclear power reactors to ‘all weather friend’ Pakistan. When China joined the NSG in 2004 it declared that it had only one pending commitment contracted before its admission to the NSG.

This was to build a second 300 MW nuclear power reactor at Chashma in Pakistan. This reactor has since been commissioned. Its claim that it had “grandfathered” its proposal to sell two more reactors in 1991 totally lacks credibility as no mention was made of this so-called deal in 1991 when it sought and obtained membership in the NSG.

Moreover, it has now been revealed by American academic Ashley Tellis that during the Bush Administration, China was repeatedly warned that that nuclear sales to Pakistan did evoke concerns about possible diversion of Chinese technology and materials to Islamabad’s nuclear weapons programme, while cautioning Beijing not to violate NSG guidelines.

 Not surprisingly, when the NSG met in New Zealand on June 24-25, China declined to answer critical questions whether, in fact, there was a binding contract in place for the reactor sales it was proposing, when precisely this contract was finalised and what exactly were its terms.

A major reason why there are virtually no takers in the world of China’s rather unique nuclear cooperation with Pakistan has been Islamabad’s refusal to come clean about the involvement of its military establishment in the proliferation activities of the so-called ‘AQ Khan network’.

 We are all asked to believe that AQ Khan singlehandedly transferred nuclear weapons designs and know-how on centrifuge uranium enrichment technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Everyone knows that not even a pin can be moved out of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities without the approval of its Army establishment.

 To, therefore, claim that AQ Khan ran a ‘rogue’ proliferation network selling nuclear secrets without the knowledge of the Army top brass is about as credible as Pakistani assertions that the 26/11 Mumbai outrage was the work of ‘non-state actors’, carried out without the knowledge of its military establishment.

It has now been revealed by American nuclear scientists Thomas Reed and Danny Stillman after elaborate deliberations with Chinese nuclear scientists and others that the 35th nuclear test carried out in China at Lop Nor on May 26, 1990, was of a Pakistan-assembled, Chinese designed fission weapon.

The design of this weapon corresponded to the nuclear weapons design given by AQ Khan in the shopping bag of his Rawalpindi tailor to the Libyans. India has to realise that while dealing with Pakistan, which is a dysfunctional entity, it really is facing an assertive China, determined on its strategic containment.

Source: Daily Pioneer