US, India should begin classified exchanges on Pak: report

Washington, Sep 21 (PTI) India and the US should prepare
a plan for exigencies in Pakistan if there is a collapse of
the state structure and a threat to the safety of its nuclear
weapons, which could fall into the hands of terrorists.
"The US and India should begin classified exchanges on
multiple Pakistan contingencies, including the collapse of the
Pakistan state and the specter of the Pakistan military losing
control of its nuclear arsenal," a report jointly brought out
by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Aspen Institute
has recommend.
"The obvious point that the United States and India have
vital national interests in the future of nuclear weapons and
material in Pakistan, which is the largest producer of fissile
material in the world today, and which is moving toward a
nuclear doctrine of battlefield capability," former US envoy
to India Robert Blackwill said at a panel discussion here.
The report says that Pakistan may well be in secular
decline, and that the US strategy followed by the last two
administrations has failed to bring Pakistan to act against
the terrorist groups that kill Indians and Americans in
Afghanistan.
It calls for a new strategy and part of that new strategy
should be a heavy condition on all future arms transfers to
Pakistan and the its military moving against terrorist groups.
The growth of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, its possible
greater dispersion in conjunction with battlefield roles, and
the systemic stresses on the Pakistani state all could
negatively affect over time the arsenal's safety and security.
These vital national interests make this the primary
concern of the United States and India regarding Pakistan,
says the report that runs into more than 60 pages.
One of the prescriptions in the report recommends that
India continue to reassure Islamabad that it has no interest
in the destabilisation of Pakistan.
"Given where the report starts, which is a preoccupation
with Pakistan nuclear weapons, you could see why logically
India and the US would not like to see a destabilising
Pakistan, given the effects of that, as the analysis of the
report suggests, on the safety and security of nuclear
weapons," Blackwill said.
The report states that Pakistan's intelligence agencies
support terrorist groups that target India, Afghanistan and
the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition
forces, killing and injuring not merely foreign civilians and
soldiers, but also causing considerable damage to Pakistani
society.
In particular, terrorism has been used by Islamabad since
the early 1990s as an instrument of "low-intensity conflict"
to press New Delhi into "concessions on Kashmir."