Now, Pakistan wants India-like N-deal from the US

Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday said the United States should offer Pakistan a civil nuclear cooperation deal similar to the one it finalised with India in order to maintain "balance" in the region.

"As far as the civil nuclear cooperation is concerned, the US has given this facility to India and we think they should give a similar facility to Pakistan to maintain the balance in this region," Gilani said.

Pakistan has held talks with France on civil nuclear cooperation, he said during a brief interaction with reporters on the sidelines of an official function.

Asked about India's strong reaction to the release of Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Mohd Saeed by a Pakistani court and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna's comments that bilateral talks could not be resumed till Pakistan took credible action against terrorism emanating from its soil, Gilani said: "That is their point of view. As far as we are concerned, action can be taken only when there is evidence."

However, Gilani acknowledged that there are loopholes in Pakistan's laws for tackling terrorism. He said the government would consult political parties to find ways to improve such legislation. "We have the resolve to end terrorism and we will examine what legislation is needed to make this more effective," he said.

Pakistan authorities have said they would file an appeal against the Lahore High Court's order freeing Saeed nearly six months after he was placed under house arrest in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. In reply to a question about possible Indian involvement in fomenting unrest in Pakistan, Gilani said intelligence agencies are probing such allegations.

"When they have evidence, we will take it up at the appropriate level," he added.

Gilani described the US policy of conducting drone attacks in the tribal belt as counter-productive and criticised US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke for saying that no Pakistani leader had raised the issue during his recent visit to the country.

Holbrooke, who yesterday ended a three-day visit to the country, told a news conference that no Pakistani leader had raised the issue of drone attacks.

Gilani said both he and opposition PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif had told Holbrooke the drone attacks are counter- productive.

The Prime Minister said both he and Sharif had told Holbrooke that the US should instead provide drones to Pakistan so that it could carry out such strikes on its own. The Pakistan government and military had developed a "sound" strategy to separate militants from the residents of the tribal areas, he said.

"But they get united whenever there are drone strikes and this is counterproductive. It adds to our problems," he added.

Gilani said the ongoing military operations against the Taliban in Swat was not a conventional war and the government wanted it to end as soon as possible so that people displaced by the fight can return to their homes with dignity. Over 2.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting in Buner, Dir and Swat districts of the North West Frontier Province. More than 1,300 militants and over 100 security personnel have died since the operations were launched.

In other news:

'Pakistan built up army against India with US military aid': Pentagon Study

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2266265/posts

Saturday, June 06, 2009

WASHINGTON: Pakistan has used a substantial amount of military aid from the US meant to fight terrorism to build up its army with modern weapons and equipment for a conventional warfare against India, Pentagon documents have revealed.

All this was done with the knowledge of the then Bush administration, which not only provided $1.9 billion in foreign military financing (FMF) but also signed agreements with Pakistan for military sales worth nearly $5 billion during the period, showed the documents.

The Pentagon documents also revealed that a major post-9/11 American defence supply to Pakistan under FMF had nothing to do with its fight against terrorism.

While the Taliban and al-Qaida gained ground in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, Islamabad bought eight P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft and their refurbishment worth $474 million. It also placed orders for 5,250 TOW anti-armour missiles worth $186 million. 2,007 of these have already been delivered and the rest are in the process of being supplied.

Besides buying more than 5,600 military radio sets worth $163 million, Pakistan bought six AN/TPS-77 surveillance radars worth $100 million and six C-130E transport aircraft and their refurbishment worth $76 million. Under the Excess Defence Articles (EDA), it was granted 20 AH-1F Cobra attack helicopters, which were then refurbished, according to the Pentagon documents.

Pakistan also used a substantial chunk of America's FMF to purchase up to 60 mid-life update kits for F-16 A/B combat aircraft valued at $891 million. Of this, it paid $477 million from the FMF funds given by the United States.

Similarly, of the $87 million worth order for 115 M-109 self-propelled howitzers, it paid $53 million from FMF. And all this happened while Pakistan's economic situation deteriorated.

Islamabad also paid a whopping $1.43 billion to the US to purchase 18 new F-16 combat aircraft and another $629 million for F-16 armaments.

Prominent among these are 500 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles; 1,450 2,000-pound bombs; 500 JDAM tail Kits for gravity bombs and 1,600 Enhanced Paveway laser-guided kits, also for gravity bombs. F-16 has not been delivered to date.

Pakistan also paid $298 million for 100 Harpoon anti-ship missiles; $95 million for 500 sidewinder air-to-air missiles and $80 million for six Phalanx close-in-naval guns.

While the Pentagon notified Congress on the possible transfer to Pakistan of three P-3B aircraft as EDA grants that would be modified to carry the E-2C Hawkeye air-borne early warning suite in a deal worth up to $855 million, this effort has not progressed beyond the notification stage.

Major EDA grants since 2001 include 14 F-16A/B combat aircraft and 39 T-37 military trainer jets.

Under Coalition Support Funds -- part of the Pentagon budget -- Pakistan has received 26 Bell 412 utility helicopters, along with related parts and maintenance, valued at $235 million.

Finally, under 1206 and Frontier Corps Authorities, the United States has provided Pakistan with helicopter spare parts, night vision goggles, radios, body armour, helmets, first aid kits, litters and other individual soldier equipment.

Actually, I think that would be an interesting idea, but not as Pakistan intends. The Russians had part of the idea first.

Provide both the technology and nuclear fuel, but both of which are non-proliferative kinds, in *exchange* for the dismantling of their proliferative nuclear reactors.

It’s a process. While creating either thorium-based or pebble bed reactors for them, neither of which can be directly used to produce weapons grade material, they continue to get energy from their existing reactors, but we get their expended fuel for reprocessing, less the plutonium.

Then, they discontinue using their existing reactors, which are carefully decommissioned, and they get much more energy from the new reactors. But they are no longer in the business of making more weapons grade nuclear material.

As side notes, China is intending to build some 300 pebble bed reactors, so even they can play nice with the Pakistanis in this deal.

Importantly, though, we cannot provide them the thorium or pebble bed reactors unless they agree to eventually get rid of their existing reactors. This is because they would likely divert a lot of their new energy into weapons grade enrichment of uranium, so we would just be helping them to build more and more bombs.

Turned this up:

A breakthrough for India – Thorium reactor makes civilian nuke deal with America unnecessary

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Jul. 2, 2007

Strategically India needs the nuke deal with America. But technologically, India achieved a solid breakthrough that will make the nuclear deal with American unnecessary. A team of scientists at a premier Indian nuclear facility has designed an innovative reactor that can run on thorium - available in abundance in the country - and will eventually do away with the need for uranium.

That is a fitting reply to the Australians that sold Uranium to China in abundance and refused India any Uranium. It is also a fitting reply to America trying to control Indian nuclear independence.

According to media reports, the novel Fast Thorium Breeder Reactor (FTBR), being developed by V. Jagannathan and his team at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, has received global attention after a paper was submitted to the International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES) held June 9-14 in Istanbul.

I heartily agree that India is, and should be recognized, as a world UNSC veto major power. Comparatively, Pakistan is a gnat.

However, about the only American leader who grasped that fact was W. Bush, who had to use a Herculean effort to point out the obvious to Washington, D.C., whose imagination of India was stuck in the 1960s. They thought he had lost his marbles.

Fortunately, he had some success in removing the blinders, but it still means that Washington is starting from scratch in developing foreign policy with relation to India.

By my own lights, I strongly advocated the sale or even gift, of the USS Kitty Hawk to India, for the purposes of reverse engineering and the radical development of an Indian surface fleet far superior to China’s, in so far as aircraft carriers go.

However, the economic stress of military modernization and a space program, along with everything else, is soon going to put substantial strain on the Indian economy. While relatively cheap energy is a big boost in that sphere, India needs a breakthrough technology family, some variety of economic revolution, to get the massive capital influx it needs.

The degree of difficulty in carrier construction, maintenance and operations goes up geometrically with size. The USS Kitty Hawk has almost twice the displacement of the Admiral Gorshkov, which was the peak AC technology the Soviet Union could ever master.

Just stabilization alone is terribly complex. Operations, at least the way the Soviets did it, without NCOs, would be near impossible. To accept and reverse engineer and operate the Kitty Hawk would take a national commitment by India on a par with or harder than a Lunar landing mission.

To start with, India doesn’t currently have a port that could accommodate the Kitty Hawk. And it would need a small city for the scientific and engineering facilities needed to recreate it. With the idea of spending 20-30 years to build a fleet of that class, and a port to support that fleet, this would need a major national effort.

To make matters even more complex, India would need to perhaps double or triple the size of its navy to support the escort groups of the new carriers.

But the end result would be India becoming an omnipresent force in the world’s oceans, with an immense merchant marine, and the evolution of a maritime culture throughout the country.

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