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A decade of restraint since we entered nuclear club: Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Terming the 10 years since it entered the nuclear club “a decade of responsibility and restraint,” Pakistan on Wednesday said it had “endeavoured to promote the cause of peace, disarmament and non-proliferation” in the region.

In a statement to mark the 10th anniversary of the country’s nuclear tests, the Foreign Ministry said Pakistan was opposed to a nuclear arms race in South Asia.

It recalled a joint statement issued after the first round of talks with India on nuclear confidence-building measures in June 2004, in which both sides recognised that “nuclear capabilities of each other, which are based on their national security imperatives, constitute a factor for stability.”

Referring to its Nuclear Command and Control mechanism, the Foreign Ministry said Pakistan took its responsibilities as a nuclear weapons state seriously, and had set in place mechanisms against its strategic assets falling into wrong hands and against proliferation.

“While continuing to act with responsibility and avoiding an arms race, Pakistan will be oblivious neither to its security requirements nor to the needs of its economic development.”

Countrywide, rallies were held to mark the anniversary of a day that many Pakistanis look back on with pride despite international sanctions and the resultant economic hardships.

A rally converged outside the sprawling Islamabad home of Abdul Qadeer Khan at the foothills of the Marghallas, demanding that the government end his house arrest.

The widely revered Dr. Khan, known in Pakistan as the “father of the bomb,” was placed under house arrest by President Pervez Musharraf after he confessed on national television to selling nuclear secrets abroad.

During the elections, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) promised to release him and make him President. The government recently eased restrictions on the scientist, allowing him to visit the Academy of Sciences, where he had tea with his former colleagues. He has also been allowed to meet visitors at home. But the government has not said whether it plans to release him, and if so, when.

Pakistani media, commenting on 10 years after the bomb, appeared unconvinced about its benefits. The News said it would have been more a source of pride had Pakistan succeeded in wiping out poverty and illiteracy that currently place it among the bottom-most nations on human development indices.

Writing in the Dawn, nuclear physicist and anti-nuclear weapons campaigner Pervez Hoodbhoy noted that possession of the bomb provided no defence against the “internal war” that Pakistan was up against.

“It was a lie that the bomb could protect Pakistan, its people or its armed forces. The bomb cannot help us recover the territory seized by the Baithullahs and the Fazlullahs. Our nukes certainly give us the ability to destroy India — and to be destroyed in return. But that’s about it. The much vaunted nuclear dividend turned out to be empty,” Dr. Hoodbhoy wrote.

The Nation, however, called the anniversary a “day of exultation” and “source of jubilation and pride” for all Pakistanis that theirs was the only Islamic nation to possess the bomb. Besides creating a “strategic balance” in the region, the bomb had made Pakistan’s defences “impregnable.”

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