US Putting Pressure on Pakistan to Sign the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty

United States of America is putting pressure on the Pakistan to sign the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT). USA along with other western countries are trying to change Pakistan’s stance on the treaty that will ban it from producing the highly enriched uranium and plutonium to manufacture the nuclear weapons.

Pakistan which is estimated to have over 100 nuclear weapons along with the different types of long range ballistic and cruise missiles. Pakistan have conducted its six nuclear tests in May 1998 after indan nuclear tests. Yields of these tests were 12kt, 30 to 35kt while other four were sub-kt tests.

It is estimated that with data from these tests Pakistan can developed operational low weight compact nuclear warheads in range of 25kt to 150kt for its missiles and 300–500kt heavy large-size nuclear warheads for its fighter aircrafts and Shaheen-II missiles. Pakistan is also working on the MIRV for its missiles to counter the Indian anti ballistic missile system.

Pakistan in current decade have invested a lot of resources to increase its capacity to produce plutonium at Khushab. Plutonium can be used to produce a very sophisticated, compact and powerful nuclear weapon. Pakistan is also producing the tritium the same facility to increase the explosive yield of its nuclear weapons by 5 to 6 times. Second Khushab reactor has already started operating this year while work on third is under progress.

Given the large size of India and its investment in production of nuclear fissile material, Pakistan is not ready to stop its production of fissile material as Pakistan feels that it will put Pakistan at a disadvantage.

US President Barack Obama is not happy with the Pakistan’s refusal to sign the FMCT and is using all kind of pressure from sanctions to threats to change Pakistan’s mind on FMCT, but so far Pakistani government have decided not to give in as they feel that if they sign the FMCT, security of Pakistan will seriously undermined. They think that this treaty will only effect the Pakistan as other powers already have very big surplus nuclear fuel that can be used at any time to manufacture thousand of nuclear weapons.