India is one of the few countries in the world who is striving for peace development and security. It has always helped poor, underdeveloped, developing nations to strive for progress and peace. It conducted nuclear test only for its regional security and never violated any international norms or regulations.
However, there are some countries in the world who want to go in parallel with India without understanding their role. When India is set to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Pakistan wants to follow? Is Pakistan eligible to become member of Nuclear Supplier Group? If we see its track history with North Korea and other countries in supplying nuclear design to nuclear technology, it is more a rogue nation and axis of evil?
Firstly, Pakistan has been accused by US officials of having secretly supplied North Korea with nuclear technology for military purposes. The CIA claimed to have tracked several air shipments between the two countries via satellite. The US Government believes that Dr. A. Q. Khan, a senior atomic research scientist, has travelled to North Korea several times and provided crucial technological aid to the North Korean government to create HEU.
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Robert Einhorn, Former PresidentBill Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, was quoted by The Washington Post that North Korea and Pakistan have been known to engage in sensitive trade, including Pakistans purchase of Nodong missiles from North Korea.” The Nodong, it is generally believed, was acquired in the mid-1990s (1997) and renamed Ghauri. The Ghauri has been repeatedly test-flown in Pakistan.
Joseph Cirincione, director of the non-proliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, told India’s Outlook magazine that it would be perfectly rational to assume that Pakistan provided the nuclear technology in exchange for missiles: It’s a logical deal, and at the time it must have made perfect sense from the Pakistani point of view.
Secondly, in a recent Washington Post article on North Korea’s clandestine links with Pakistan, the newspaper published a letter which it said was given to it by the scholar Simon Henderson, who says it was given to him by Abdul Qadeer Khan back in 2007. The letter is reported to have been written by Jeon Byung Ho, just a month after Pakistan’s first nuclear test in May 1998. In the letter Jeon, who at that time was the head of North Korea’s nuclear programme, claims his country had paid up to$3 mn to the then Pakistan Army chief Jehangir Karamat to put “agreed documents and nuclear components” on a plane that was returning to Pyongyang after delivering missile parts to Pakistan.
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Further Joseph Cirincione has said that the North Koreans established links directly with Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, head of the eponymous weapons laboratories, which developed the enrichment technology at Kahuta, based on pilfered designs. Khan made 12 separate trips to Pyongyang in four years, underscoring his intimate and personal relationship with North Korea.
Thirdly, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had met with North Korean officials on several occasions during the 1990s to disclose a deal that would give Pakistan access to the North Korean Rodong long-range missiles. In return, Pakistan would supply North Korea with civilian nuclear technology instead of money, due to lack of funds.
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Thirdly, a number of Indian intelligence sources too have confirmed the North Korea-Pakistan trade-off, partly based on the documents they found on board a North Korean ship which they intercepted in 1999 at an Indian port en route to Karachi from Pyongyang, carrying 170 tonnes of material suspected to be metal casings and missile components.
Fourthly, in late 2003, a convoluted turn of events involving nuclear safeguards inspections in Iran and a decision by Libya in December to renounce its WMD programs provided evidence that Pakistani scientists had supplied nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. While a Japanese report stated that Pakistan had exported actual centrifuge rotors (2,000-3,000). Los Angeles Times in 2004 quoted that “A Pakistani official involved in Khan’s investigation reportedly said North Korea ordered P-1 centrifuge components from 1997 to 2000.”
At last, one can say that Pakistan is widely engaged in exporting and importing all manner of nuclear and missile technologies, sub-systems and materials to Iran, Libya and North Korea. North Korea-Pakistan deal would be the first case of bomb-making know-how being transferred from one state to another. India suspects that North Korea’s secret defense cooperation with Pakistan is still continuing. So world should understand and never allow Pakistan in Nuclear Supplier Group.
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