While US is asking Pakistan not to block FMCT negotiations despite of its reservations that such treaty will only provide India with a advantage in the nuclear arsenal. US diplomat was saying in one of the cable that while US wants to use China’s influence along with the other pressures to force Pakistan to change its position.
President Barack Obama is looking to start these talks to stop and ultimately reduce the production the fissile material as early as in January next year.
On the other hand Pakistan have so far rejected all the pressure from the US and its allies as Pakistan feels that signing of the FMCT will seriously dent the security of Pakistan. Pakistani officials have already pointed out the fact that treaty will only affect the Pakistan as other nuclear weapons states have very large surplus nuclear fuel which can be used at to manufacture thousand of nuclear weapons.
They say that the major purpose of starting these talks at this point in time is to stop Pakistan from producing the highly enriched uranium and plutonium to manufacture additional nuclear weapons which can counter the Indian nuclear arsenal arising from the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Combine these concerns with the US recent use excuses like threat of extremist takeover of Pakistani arsenal to pressure Pakistan to cape its nuclear weapons program, suspicions are that ultimate goal of the US is to provide India with a clear advantage in nuclear arsenal.
As safeguards agreed under the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement will only apply to that some of its facilities, India can use the peaceful nuclear technology provided to them for the advancement of its nuclear weapons program. US has taken no such steps that can assure Pakistan the India won’t be allowed to use the nuclear technology provided to it for peaceful purposes for development of nuclear weapons program just like it did in the past.
As India was not asked to India to cap or limit its fissile material production, they can use all the locally produce uranium for their nuclear weapons program as they are getting uranium for civilaion reactors from the outside world. This means that India’s ability to mass produce the fissile material has increase many fold. This agreement does not require India to restrict the number of nuclear warhead it can produce.
West has already tried to help India develop in its nuclear energy under the Atoms for Peace program. Result of the cooperation in 1950s was that India used nuclear reactor provided to them for energy generation to produce nuclear fuel for its first nuclear bomb.
While there is no way to predict the actual number of nuclear weapons in Pakistani arsenal, it is estimated that Pakistan has over 100 nuclear weapons. These weapons are complimented by its nuclear capable medium range ballistic with ranges upto 2500 kilometers and cruise missiles with ranges of 750 kilometers.
In response to the Indian nuclear test Pakistan have conducted its six nuclear tests of its own in May 1998.Its is estimated that results of these nuclear tests had enabled Pakistani scientists to deploy compact nuclear warheads in range of 25kt to 150kt and it can also develop 300–500kt heavy large-size nuclear warheads.
To ensure the strategic balance Pakistan is increasing its capacity to produce plutonium at Khushab. Plutonium based warheads are very light and compact when compared to the uranium based nuclear weapon. These facilities are also being used to produce the tritium to increase the explosive yield of its nuclear warheads by 5 to 6 times. Khushab nuclear reactor-II is already operational while work on Khushab nuclear reactor-III is under progress.
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