Defiant Pakistan threatens to use nuke

Yahoo News India ^ | 05.30.02 | Press Trust of India

[callisto]

United Nations, May 30 (PTI) Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear weapons even if India stuck to conventional arms in any conflict, asserting that it has never subscribed to "no-first-use" of atomic weapons and that ruling out their use would give New Delhi a "license to kill."

"India should not have the license to kill with conventional weapons while Pakistan's hands are tied regarding other means to defend itself," said its new ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram.

The highly bellicose and provocative statements by Akram on the second day on the job yesterday surprised diplomats and officials at the United Nations who declined to make an immediate comment.

Pakistan, he said, has to rely on the "means it possessed to deter Indian aggression" and would not "neutralise" that deterrence by any doctrine of "no-first-use."

To a question at his first news conference after taking over the job, Akram said any action by India across the border, any aerial attack on Pakistani territory and its assets, and any action to economically strangle it would be "viewed" as aggression and would be "responded to by Pakistan."

Noting that both India and Pakistan possessed nuclear weapons, he said while that should instill restraint on both sides, "it does not seem to do so on the Indian side."

The launching of a sharp attack less than 48 hours after taking over, some diplomats believe, could mean that Pakistan plans to use the United Nations for anti-Indian propaganda.

Akram, who had been his country's ambassador to the UN at Geneva, is known for his rhetoric against India and in previous years had also made highly provocative statements on Kashmir during debates whether the occasion demanded or not.

Pakistan, Akram claimed, believed in "no-first-use of force." That was the reason, he said, that Islamabad had offered non-aggression pact to New Delhi but India had rejected it.

"If India reserved the right to use conventional weapons, how could Pakistan - a weaker power-be expected to rule out all means of deterrence."

The United Nations Charter, the Pakistani ambassador said, prohibited the use of force and India should be committed to "non-use-of-force".

Akarm said the Security Council should address the issues of tensions between India and Pakistan which "constituted a threat to international peace and security."

"Whenever there is a threat of use of force against a member state and a threat to international peace and security, there is an obligation for the Council to address that situation," he told the news conference

[cake_crumb]

"Dear Pakistan,
If you use nuclear weapons against India, the whole world will suffer the consequences of fallout and we shall have no choice but to turn your country into a cinder."

Quote of the month nomination BUMP

[Cicero5]

http://www.usdpi.org/Technological%20DP%20Links.htm

Check out this link. There are many others that you can follow from it if you find it interesting.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Thank you. I am honored.

[Charles Martel]

Haven't seen that flick since '88 but remembered Chuck ranting about "the cobalt bomb" :-)

You've seen it more recently than me. I could not recall if Heston was in that one or not. I'm pretty sure that James Franciscus was in it, though. Ah, that good ol' Sunday morning movie fare...

[My Identity]

For Reference:

Location	Size	Count
Hiroshima	15 kiloton	1
	21 kiloton	1
India	15-60 kilotons each	20-60
Pakistan	15-25 kilotons each	10-30
Russia	3-50 megatons each	2,000+

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Fallout effects from Indi-Paki nuke exchange

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And Map-a-Blast

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Film Footage of Actual Blasts
From a PBS site:

Operation Cue (500kb) Beginning in 1953 the Federal Civil Defense Adminstration, working with the Atomic Energy Commission, set up an atomic test program to investigate the effects of nuclear weapons on typical American homes and their furnishings.	Operation Castle (300kb) Operation Castle, a series of thermonuclear tests, was conducted in the Marshall Islands in the spring of 1954. The 15 megaton Bravo detonation was over 1,000 times larger than Hiroshima.	Layer Cake Design (500kb) In Andrei Sakharov's Layer Cake design, several layers of light and heavy elements were alternated. High explosives surrounding the Layer Cake would be used to implode and ignite the atomic bomb at the center of the device. The atomic explosion would then set off a fusion reaction in the deuterium.
Operation Cue (300kb) Each home was equipped with refrigerators, typical appliances, the kinds of food one would eat, from baby food to adult food, and were exposed to the blast.	Operation Castle (100kb) Operation Castle yielded more fallout than any of the other U.S. thermonuclear tests, contaminating military personnel and civilians on nearby islands.	Camp Desert Rock (900kb) Camp Desert Rock, Nevada - The U.S. military began using smaller blasts to learn how to fight a nuclear war. On April 22, 1952 approximately 2,000 Army personnel conducted maneuvers beneath the mushroom cloud of the 31-kiloton Charlie nuclear detonation.

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You need Apple's Quicktime 3.0 to be able to see the videos.

[RightWhale]

The danger of fallout from this is vastly overrated. Sure, it is there, but the real damage is done within the radii of destruction of the fireball itself.