proceed forward, our strategy will take in effect those well-known differences.” Over the years, despite their Strategic Dialogue, it’s been clear that such a deal for Pakistan remains a distant dream as long as the US continues to take into account the “well known differences”.
Instead, Pakistan has so far been able to win the Chinese cooperation in the nuclear domain, with Chinese companies currently financing and helping Pakistan with the construction of civilian nuclear reactors in Karachi.
As far as concerns vis-à-vis the US’s nuclear trade with India go, anxieties inside Pakistan are quite apparent but a little misplaced. Many in the past have said that India could well use the spent fuel from the reactors supplied by the US to fire up its Fast Breeder Reactor in order to make weapons grade plutonium but that, in effect, has become almost impossible.
In fact, the agreement comes with strings attached which have required India to completely demarcate its civilian and military programmes. It has further placed all its indigenous civilian, as well as nuclear reactors acquired from the US, under the IAEA’s full scope safeguards, which would even account for the spent fuel coming out of these reactors.
So, simply: The IAEA would be monitoring the raw material for nuclear energy – which could be used for nuclear weapons from the moment it enters the reactor till the product – which is also a raw material to make nuclear weapons – is removed or in other words, tracking the movement ‘from cradle to grave’.
More than diversion of nuclear materials, Pakistan would be watching out for India’s freed up local reserves of natural uranium. These reserves were previously being split between both the civilian as well as the nuclear weapons programme but with the US, as well as other countries, now taking care of India’s civilian nuclear requirements, India could now completely channel these local uranium reserves towards its nuclear weapons programme and increase the pace of its armament. Thus, more nukes on the other side of the border, possibly.