Pakistan on Friday said it will attend the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan to be held in Amritsar in December but has not decided on the "manner and level" of participation, a day after India welcomed Islamabad's decision to take part in the meet.
Pakistan also raised its concern over the build-up of unprotected weapon usable fissile material in India on Friday, according to a Dawn report.
This build-up has been facilitated by the 2008 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) waiver granted to India, which not only dented the credibility of the non-proliferation regime and undermined its efficacy, but also negatively affected the strategic balance in South Asia. It was unfortunate that the NSG did not require India to make any worthwhile non-proliferation commitments at the time.Nafees Zakriya, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman
Zakriya said that Pakistan has long maintained that India’s rapidly expanding military nuclear programme poses a grave threat to peace and stability in the region and beyond.
“A groundbreaking research carried out by nuclear experts has revealed that India already has sufficient material and technical capacity to make 356 to 492 nuclear bombs. These concerns have been fully validated by publicly available reports on significant upcoming fissile material facilities and build-up of weapon usable fissile material in India.”
The FO spokesman warned that another country-specific exemption by the NSG on the membership question would further exacerbate the ill-effects of the 2008 exemption.
It remains our hope that the NSG member states would make a well-considered decision this time keeping in view its long-term implications for the global non-proliferation regime as well as strategic stability in our region.
Source: Dawn
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