Pakistan claims closing nuclear deal with France

France has reportedly agreed to a civilian nuclear deal with Pakistan on the lines of the Indo-US nuclear deal, (See: Indo-US nuclear deal: Signed, sealed and delivered) after a meeting between Pakistan President Asif Zardari and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris yesterday.

French media quoted the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, as saying, that France had agreed to transfer civilian nuclear technology to Pakistan.

The minister added that Sarkozy said, "What can be done for India can be done for Pakistan as well."

Qureshi said that Pakistan and France will conduct further negotiations in July and the nuclear deal would most probably be signed when Sarkozy visits Pakistan in September.

If true, such a deal could raise the hackles of the IAEA, the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and India.

However, in a conflicting statement the French President's official residence, the ElyseePalace said that France has agreed to co-operate with Pakistan in the field of "nuclear safety."

A representative for the French presidency said that the French President had agreed to co-operate with Pakistan "within the framework of its international agreements in the field of nuclear safety".

Speaking to reporters, Qureshi said that the deal was a significant development and the breakthrough came after marathon talks between the Pakistani President and his French counterpart.

Since it it is not a signitory to the NPT, the transfer of nuclear technology to Pakistan, whether civillian or military, is banned and commentators say it is highly umlikely that France would breach this embargo.

Proliferation concerns
After years of denials, Pakistan's credibility on nuclear proliferation was exposed in 2004, when it was revealed that the godfather of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan sold nuclear technology to countries like Libya, Iran and North Korea.

Pakistan general, Khalid Kidwai, who is now in charge of Pakistan's Strategic Plans Division or nuclear weapons, was used by Gen Pervez Musharraf to extract a  confession from Khan so that he could be identified as the sole culprit, thus sparing the Pakistan military establishment and the ISI, any embarrassment of involvement in nuclear proliferation.

Reports emanating from former US intelligence personnel, say that the US has installed sophisticated bugging equipment on Pakistan's nuclear warheads, which will reveal the location, if the warhead is moved. The Bush administration had spent $100 million to help Pakistan raise the security of its approximately 60 -100 nuclear devices by supplying nuclear-tracking devices, PAL (locking devices) system and improving the security at Pakistan's nuclear bunkers, and improving background checks for workers at nuclear sites.

Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had often said that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure and last week, US regional commander General David Petraeus also said that Pakistan's nuclear sites are secure from the Taliban.

According to unconfirmed intelligence reports, India is tracking intensively the inroads made by the Taliban, which is just 62 miles away from Islamabad, close to nuclear storage sites in Punjab, Sind and Baluchistan provinces, where most of Pakistan's nuclear sites are said to located.

According to Israeli intelligence magazine, the DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive report of Friday, 15 May, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had told US President Barack Obama last week that "Pakistan is lost," since the Taliban and Al Qaeda have their strongholds in North West FrontierProvince areas.

DEBKA had given a detail listing of all locations of Pakistan's nuclear sites with illustrations on a special map.

His comment came in the wake of Indian intelligence reporting that Pakistan was also expanding its nuclear weapons programme even as the Taliban was taking over sensitive and key areas in northwest Pakistan.

Satellite pictures have revealed that Pakistan is nearing completing two new plutonium production nuclear reactors next to a reactor at Khushab, about 160 miles southwest of Islamabad.

These reactors are capable of producing plutonium for weapons, which would be smaller, lighter and more competent than the approximately 60-100 uranium-fueled warheads that Pakistan currently has in its armory.

India's concern is that the two new plutonium production nuclear reactors are situated in northern border of Punjab province, close to North West Frontier Province, where the Taliban has complete control.

Indian intelligence agencies are reported to have told Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh that the Buner area, where the Pakistan military is currently fighting the Taliban, is home to a number of important military-industrial complexes, including the Gadwal Uranium Enrichment Plant, which is rumoured to perform the final enrichment of uranium weapons fuel.

In addition, near Gadwal is the Kamra Air Weapons Complex, which apart from manufacturing aircrafts and conventional bombs, is also said to have certain processes in the making of nuclear arms.

Pakistan also has other nuclear enrichment facilities, including the Sihala and Golra ultracentrifuge plants.

Pakistan, like India keeps their nuclear cores stored separately from their conventional explosive triggers and since Pakistan's nuclear warheads are fitted with highly classified US bugging devices and other security devices, it requires two people to trigger the firing codes.

Although officially, President Zardari is supposed to have the control over the country's Nuclear Command Authority, in reality, the control is with the army chief of staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's powerful intelligence agency.

Currently, with Pakistan up to its throat, fighting its former ally, the Taliban from taking over a vast area of Pakistan as also from the daily acts of bombings, Quershi's statements appears to more of a dream than the radical overnight change adopted by France.