Pakistan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar expressed concerns over India’s “generous” supply of conventional and non-conventional weapons, saying it was seriously jeopardizing “our national security” and straining South Asia’s strategic stability.
\She spoke to a high-level UN panel via video link from Islamabad and said, “The largest country in the region continues to benefit from nuclear exceptionalism, in violation of established non-proliferation norms and principles.” She omitted mentioning India. The minister continued, “This country continues to be a net recipient of generous supplies of advanced conventional and non-conventional weapons, technologies, and platforms.
Ms. Khar was speaking to the 65-member Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, which started its session on Thursday. This group was established by the international community to negotiate arm control and disarmament agreements. The minister claimed that the favors given to India were putting pressure on the security situation, increasing threats to regional peace and stability, reinforcing a sense of impunity in the recipient state, and stifling avenues for peaceful conflict resolution. She told the delegates from all over the world, “We cannot ignore threats to our security, even as we uphold and call for restraint and responsibility.
Emphasizing that a third of humanity that lives in South Asia deserves investments in sustainable peace and development, the minister said Pakistan had a clear vision and a policy for peaceful neighbourhood on the basis of universally agreed principles; sovereign equality and undiminished security for all States; no threat or use of force and pacific settlement of disputes.
“We will pursue the path of peace, development and strategic stability in South Asia and beyond, I can assure you of that.”
Pakistan, she said, regards the Conference on Disarmament as an indispensable part of the global security architecture and the disarmament machinery.
Noting with concerns the decades-long impasse in the Conference, Ms. Khar said it’s ability to start negotiations on its agenda items remains contingent on the policy priorities of its members, their threat perceptions and their core national security concerns.
About some members’ insistence on pursuing self-serving and cost-free proposals such as banning the future production of fissile materials, she said the subject should be discussed in all its dimensions.
In this regard, Ms. Khar said Pakistan had proposed a ‘Fissile Material Treaty’ seeking to craft a new mandate for the treaty stipulating explicitly in its scope fissile material stocks, and applicable equally to all States.
The minister proposed that the Conference on Disarmament must contribute to and promote security at international and regional levels; play its role in creating conditions that were responsive to the principle of inalienable right to equal security by all States; adhere to disarmament measures in an equitable and balanced manner; its members refrain from grant of special exemptions and by fulfilling their longstanding disarmament obligations, and It must be enabled to overcome its decades-long impasse by patient and constructive engagement.
Pakistan, she added, remained committed to the goal of a nuclear weapons free world that was achieved in a universal, verifiable and non-discriminatory manner.
