Pak wants India’s nuke programme under IAEA safeguards

TIL Desk/World/Islamabad-Pakistan wants India to bring its entire civilian nuclear programme under the safeguards laid out by the International Atomic Energy Commission, the Director-General Disarmament at the Foreign Office said today.  “It is incumbent on us to stand up for our own interest. We want an assurance that India’s whole three stage nuclear power programme would be under safeguards,” DG Disarmament at Foreign Office Kamran Akhtar said.

Akhtar was speaking at a round-table discussion in Islamabad on Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT), organised to prepare for the upcoming Conference on Disarmament (CD). Experienced FMCT experts also participated in the meeting.  Pakistan will not agree to FMCT until it gets the assurance from India, he said. He said negotiating a treaty that only bans future production of fissile material without taking into account the existing stockpiles would freeze “the existing asymmetries”.

The DG Disarmament was of the opinion that India has been given “discriminatory waivers”, which add to Pakistan’s security concerns, the report said. He said eight of the Indian reactors, its fast breeder programme and approximately five tonnes of reactor-grade plutonium were included in the safeguards of dictated by the IAEA. The FMCT would put Pakistan at a permanent disadvantage and undermine its security interests, Akhtar added.