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North Korea: China also to blame, reminds
India
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - Although Pakistan is being blamed for supplying
North Korea with critical equipment for Pyongyang's
nuclear program in exchange for missile capability,
analysts say that China must have blessed the barter
deal between the countries that they describe as
Beijing's satellites.
"Given the primitive
technological infrastructure in both countries [Pakistan
and North Korea], only the credulous would believe that
both these countries developed their offensive
capabilities indigenously," contends M D Nalapat.
According to Nalapat, professor of geopolitics
at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, in the
southern Indian state of Karnataka, Beijing uses
Pakistan and North Korea as "proxy nuclear and missile
states" to further its own strategic interests. This
raises the obvious question of how the United States
could have missed this proliferation axis that links
Beijing to its two closest allies in Asia - except
deliberately.
India's outspoken Defense
Minister, George Fernandes, has minced no words in
denouncing China as the "mother of Pakistan's bomb" and
New Delhi has acknowledged that its own missile and
nuclear programs are aimed at China rather than
Pakistan.
India's anxieties regarding China and
Pakistan, with both of which it has fought costly wars,
has been to support - and seek protection under -
Washington's restructured national missile defense
system under US President George W Bush.
Bush
said on Monday that meetings on what he called the
"troubling" development of North Korea's nuclear weapons
program will be held with Russia, China, Japan and South
Korea. China's cooperation is seen as key, since Beijing
is believed to have more leverage over North Korea than
any other nation. China is the leading supplier of cheap
or free food and fuel for its impoverished neighbor, and
it is also North Korea's main trading partner, and one
of its only socialist allies.
In Washington,
Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that although
the US had chosen not to rake up Pakistan's past in
possibly aiding North Korea, he had secured an assurance
from Islamabad that it would not assist Pyongyang in its
program.
Much of what India regards as evidence
of Pakistan's proliferation links with North Korea
emanates from the seizure in June 1999 by Indian customs
of a North Korean vessel Ku Wol San bound for the
Pakistani port of Karachi at Kandla port in western
Gujarat state.
Apparently, the bulk of the cargo
in the vessel consisted of missile components and
production material for North Korea's Nodong missile, on
which Pakistan's medium-range, nuclear capable Ghauri is
based. Both missiles draw heavily from Chinese
technology.
The seizure followed a tipoff to
Indian authorities and came four months after the US
House of Representatives was told that the best way to
tackle North Korean missile exports was by interdicting
them on the high seas. The man who presented that report
was Richard Armitage, who was later appointed assistant
defense secretary and tasked to lead international
efforts to defuse a military standoff between
nuclear-armed India and Pakistan in May.
Armitage extracted a promise from Pakistan's
President General Pervez Musharraf that he would
permanently end cross-border infiltration across the
Line of Control that separates Indian Kashmir from the
Pakistan-controlled portion of the former princely
state.
The June 1999 seizure of the North Korean
vessel provided proof that Pakistan had entered into a
deal with Pyongyang to barter its nuclear technology,
miniaturized for use in nuclear warheads, in exchange
for missile technology and components.
Commenting on the alleged barter, the South
Korean newspaper Chungang Ilbo then quoted a defense
ministry official who said that North Korea was bent on
obtaining materials on miniaturized warhead technology
from Pakistan, which tested these devices in May 1998.
According to the Federation of American
Scientists, dedicated to ending the global arms race,
Pakistan's Ghauri missile "appears to be a derivative of
the North Korean Nodong design" and "represents both an
opportunity to use heavier uranium bombs on ballistic
missiles as well as to deliver nuclear warheads to
targets across much of India".
North Korean
involvement in Pakistan's nuclear and missile program
was first suspected after the mysterious June 1998
murder in Islamabad of Kim Sin-ae, wife of Kang
Thae-yun, a key figure in the
missiles-for-nuclear-technology deal, according to
Indian analysts.
Newspapers cited diplomatic
sources as saying that Kim was killed by North Korean
agents working at Pakistan's Khan Research laboratories
on suspicion that she had provided details of the
strategic weapons deals to Western intelligence
agencies.
Pakistan has never acknowledged the
North Korean link and has always maintained that its
nuclear and missile technologies are completely
indigenous. Musharraf has denied that Pakistan was in
any way involved with the North Korean bomb. "We have
never had an accident or leak or any export of fissile
material or nuclear technology or knowledge," a
Pakistani embassy spokesman in Washington said following
the recent allegations.
(Inter Press
Service)
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