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China behind Pakistan's missile tests, says
India
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - Pakistan's test on Friday
of its nuclear-capable and medium-range ballistic missile,
the Shaheen, has once again prompted India to
level accusations of missile technology proliferation by
China.
India's official reaction, made by
foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao, was, "As we
have said before, we are not particularly impressed with
these missile antics of Pakistan. It is well known that
Pakistan's missiles are based on clandestinely imported
material, equipment and technology."
Within
hours of the Pakistani test, India test-fired the
short-range surface-to-air missile Akash (called India's
Patriot missile), which can carry a 55 kilogram warhead
over 25 kilometers and can take on several targets in
the sky simultaneously.
The Akash is one of
several missiles being developed by India's indigenous
Integrated Guided Missile Development Program, which was
set up in 1983 and whose main architect, A P J Abdul
Kalam, is now president of India - a largely titular but
constitutionally important job.
Rao did not
mention any particular country, and her reaction was
directed mostly at statements by her counterpart in
Islamabad, Aziz Khan, who described the Shaheen as an
"indigenously produced" missile and the test itself as
"routine".
But on Saturday, India's outspoken
Defense Minister, George Fernandes, long a critic of
China, said that Pakistan's military had depended on
support from China ever since it was carved out as a
homeland for South Asia's Muslims in 1947 following
decolonization of British India.
"Everyone knows
what Pakistan will be without China. Its ego is boosted
purely by the support it gets from China," Fernandes
said at a convention of the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) in the western port city of Mumbai.
When India weaponized its nuclear capability
through a series of tests in May 1998, Fernandes had
said that the country aimed to counter China's
capability rather than Pakistan's, drawing protests from
Beijing. "China is the mother of Pakistan's nuclear
bomb," he said then.
India fought a bloody
border with China in 1962, and although relations
between the Asian giants have been on the mend,
Beijing's close friendship with Islamabad has remained a
sore point.
On Saturday, Fernandes said that
Pakistan's clandestine nuclear program was exposed by
the fact that it responded to India's nuclear tests in
1998 within a matter of days with a series of its own.
The last occasion when India officially referred
to Pakistan's "clandestinely acquired" missile
technology was in May when Pakistan test-fired its
medium range Ghauri and the short-range Ghaznavi
missiles at the height of military confrontation along
the Indian-Pakistan border.
That confrontation
was defused through intense international diplomacy led
by US Secretary of State Colin Powell. But India has
continued to maintain 700,000 troops along the
international border and the Line of Control (LoC) that
runs through disputed Kashmir state, where staggered
state assembly elections are currently underway.
India's dim view of Pakistan's missile
technology was endorsed on Friday by Russia's official
news agency Itar-Tass, which quoted a "top expert" who
said that Islamabad was "trying to convince the whole
world that the Ghauri and Shaheen are exceptionally
indigenously developed missiles but are carbon copies of
their North Korean and Chinese equivalents".
The
unnamed expert commented that Pakistan's latest test was
evidence that South Asia remained the most
nuclear-conflict prone region in the world and
speculated that Islamabad could now be working on an
inter-continental ballistic missile.
During the
Cold War years, Moscow was aligned with India militarily
and has continued to be India's main supplier of
military hardware, although New Delhi has been
aggressively pursuing a pro-Washington line in recent
times.
India has enthusiastically supported
Washington's missile defense system and even offered its
strength in computer software and satellite technology
in return for being given protection under a
nuclear-missile umbrella.
After India's launch
of the Akash, Pakistan's information minister Nisar
Memon accused India of initiating an arms race and
insisted that the launch of the Shaheen did not have
that intention.
The United States and Britain,
the two countries most active in shuttle diplomacy
between Islamabad and New Delhi in May and June that
headed off an all-out, possible nuclear exchange, have
both expressed disappointment at the tests.
"We're disappointed that ballistic missile tests
are occurring in the region," US State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher was reported assaying in
Washington Friday. "There is a charged atmosphere in the
region and these tests can contribute to that
atmosphere, and make it harder to prevent a costly and
destabilizing nuclear and missile arms race."
Boucher was referring to the military standoff
on the border between the two countries that has been
continuing since India blamed Pakistan for the attempt
by a jihadi squad to blow up India's national parliament
on December 13 last year.
Despite international
pressure, India has refused to pull back its troops from
the border until after the elections in Kashmir are over
on October 8, or beyond that if necessary.
India
accuses Pakistan of trying to grab Kashmir through a
"proxy war" waged through militant groups and has blamed
Islamabad for a series of murderous attacks on
candidates and other participants in the elections, the
first phase of which began on September 16.
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf
has denied supporting militant groups based in his
territory but has declared the elections illegal,
designed to perpetuate India's hold over the
Muslim-majority state and possibly rigged.
Fernandes has defended the elections in Kashmir
as free and fair. "The elections are a way of proving
that using bullets is not the only way of fighting
terrorism," he said.
In a report released last
Thursday, the US-based International Crisis Group (ICG)
blamed successive military governments in Pakistan for
continuing tensions with India and said that Musharraf's
plans to perpetuate military power in Pakistan, even
after the October 10 poll there, could lead to
instability in the region
"A military government
in Pakistan has already exacerbated tensions with India
over Kashmir and elements of the military have used
jihadis for their own purposes," the ICG report said
(Inter Press Service)
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