Reports of India’s hydrogen bomb closely monitored

ISLAMABAD

Pakistan policy planners and security analysts are closely following the shocking reports in respected and well-known international media about the Indian efforts to build hydrogen bombs. According to journalist Adrian Levy in the Foreign Policy magazine, India has built two top-secret facilities in Karnataka to enrich uranium in pursuit of its hydrogen bomb dream, a report that has created ripples in the region. The magazine has revealed that the bomb will be built at South Asia’s largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, and weapons and aircraft-testing facilities in Challakere, Karnataka.

While the stated aims of the project are apparently to “expand the government’s nuclear research, to produce fuel for India’s nuclear reactors, and to help power the country’s fleet of new submarines”, Levy has concluded that “this new facility will give India a nuclear capability — the ability to make many large-yield nuclear arms — that most experts say it presently lacks.”

He says that another of the project’s aim is “to give India an extra stockpile of enriched uranium fuel that could be used in new hydrogen bombs, also known as thermonuclear weapons, substantially increasing the explosive force of those in its existing nuclear arsenal.”

Robert Kelley, a nuclear intelligence expert, after extensive research, believes that India was pursuing a larger thermonuclear arsenal, which is the most lethal weapon in history. He warns that its development “will inevitably usher in a new nuclear arms race” in the region.

Analysts here say the development is highly alarming and should be monitored by the Western countries closely who have very little knowledge about the Indian infrastructure to store, transport and guard the fissile material.

Astonishingly, as the world continues to buy into the Indian propaganda scam, turning a blind eye to the dangerous Indian ambitions and emerging set of threats, it is Pakistan that has been denied access to civil nuclear technology, they point out.