US Exploring Deal to Limit Pakistan’s Nuclear
Arsenal
By DAVID E. SANGER OCT. 15, 2015
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is exploring a deal withPakistan that
would limit the scope of Pakistan’s
nuclear arsenal, the fastest-growing on Earth. The talks are the first in the
decade since one of the founders of its nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan,
was caught selling the country’s nuclear technology around the world.
The talks are being held in advance of the arrival of Pakistan’s prime
minister, Nawaz
Sharif, in Washington next week. They focus on American concern that
Pakistan might be on the verge of deploying a small tactical nuclear weapon —
explicitly modeled on weapons the United States put in Europe during the Cold
War to deter a Soviet invasion — that would be far harder to secure than the
country’s arsenal of larger weapons.
But outside experts familiar with the discussions, which have echoes of
the Obama administration’s first approaches to Iran on its nuclear programthree years ago, expressed deep
skepticism that Pakistan is ready to put limits on a program that is the pride
of the nation, and that it regards as its only real defense against India.
The discussions are being led by Peter R. Lavoy, a longtime intelligence
expert on the Pakistani program who is now on the staff of the National
Security Council. At the White House on Thursday, Josh Earnest, the press
secretary, was asked about the talks and broke from the administration’s
previous position of refusing to comment.
“A deal like the one that’s been discussed publicly is not something
that’s likely to come to fruition next week,” he said. “But the United States
and Pakistan are regularly engaged in a dialogue about the importance of
nuclear security. And I would anticipate that that dialogue would include
conversations between the leaders of our two countries.”
The central element of the proposal, according to other officials and
outside experts, would be a relaxation of strict controls put on Pakistan by
the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a loose affiliation of nations that tries to
control the proliferation of weapons.
“If Pakistan would take the actions requested by the United States, it
would essentially amount to recognition of rehabilitation and would essentially
amount to parole,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has maintained contacts with
the Pakistani nuclear establishment.
“I think it’s worth a try,” Mr. Perkovich said. “But I have my doubts
that the Pakistanis are capable of doing this.”
David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, first disclosed the
exploratory talks in a column a week ago. Since then, several other officials
and outside experts have talked in more detail about the effort, although the
White House has refused to comment.
The activity of Mr. Khan, who lives in retirement in a comfortable
neighborhood in Islamabad after many years of house arrest, prompted more than
a decade of American-led punishment of Pakistan’s nuclear enterprises. He ran
what amounted to the world’s most sophisticated black market in the equipment
needed to make nuclear fuel, and he did business with Iran, North Korea and
Libya.
When Libya turned over the equipment it bought, in late 2003, it
included a nearly complete design for one of China’s first nuclear
weapons.
Pakistani officials denied that any of the country’s leaders knew of Mr.
Khan’s black market activities, a story American officials did not believe
because some of the equipment was shipped on Pakistani Air Force cargo planes.
While Mr. Khan is not under formal restrictions today, he has not left Pakistan
in years and has been prohibited from talking to most outsiders.
Even before entering office, President
Obama was interested in addressing the Pakistani nuclear
problem, considered by most proliferation experts to be the most dangerous in
the world. But until now, most efforts to manage the problem have been covert.
During the Bush administration, the United States spent as much as $100
million on a highly classified program to help secure the country’s nuclear
arsenal, helping with physical security and the training of Pakistani security
personnel. Those efforts continued in the Obama years, with State Department,
Energy Department and intelligence officials meeting secretly, in locales
around the world, with senior Pakistani officials from the Strategic Plans
Division, which controls the arsenal.
They used those sessions to argue to the Pakistanis that fielding the
small, short-range nuclear
weapons, which Pakistan designed to use against an invading Indian
ground force, would be highly risky.
American officials have told Congress they are increasingly convinced
that most of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is under good safeguards, with warheads
separated from delivery vehicles and a series of measures in place to guard
against unauthorized use. But they fear the smaller weapons are easier to
steal, or would be easier to use should they fall into the hands of a rogue
commander.
“All it takes is one commander with secret radical sympathies, and you
have a big problem,” said one former official who dealt with the issue.
The message appears to have resonated; an unknown number of the tactical
weapons were built, but not deployed. It is that problem that Mr. Lavoy and
others are trying to forestall, along with preventing Pakistan from deploying
some long-range missiles that could reach well beyond India.
But American leverage has been hard to find. Unlike Iran, Pakistan never
signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the international agreement that
prohibits nations, except for existing declared nuclear states like the United
States, from possessing a nuclear arsenal. Pakistan is not alone in that
distinction: India and Israel also have not signed.
(North Korea has twice declared that it has withdrawn from the treaty,
in 1993 and 2003.)
Ordinarily, any country’s refusal to sign the treaty would preclude
American nuclear cooperation. So Pakistani officials remain angry with the
American decision to enter an agreement with India in 2005 allowing India to
buy civil nuclear technology, even though it remains outside the treaty and put
no limits on its nuclear program.
Under that agreement, India’s nuclear infrastructure was split with a
civilian program that is under international inspection, and a military program
that is not.
Pakistani officials have demanded the same arrangement.
That does not appear to be on the table. Instead, the United States is
exploring ways to relax restrictions on nuclear-related technology to Pakistan,
perhaps with a long-term goal of allowing the country to join the Nuclear
Suppliers Group, which regulates the sale of the technology. That would be
largely symbolic: Pakistan manages to import or make what it needs for its
nuclear arsenal, and China has already broken ground on a $9.6 billion nuclear
power complex in Karachi. Mr. Sharif presided over the ceremony.
William J. Broad
contributed reporting from New York, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis from
Washington.
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