Retired diplomats and generals from India and Pakistan, who visited Washington to promote the elimination of all nuclear weapons, said Thursday that their countries’ atomic weapons remain safe from terrorists.
“There is no way that any militant can get any fissile material or weapons and use them,” said Lt. Gen. Talat Masood of the Pakistani army. “Pakistan has gone to the extent of eating grass to acquire nuclear weapons, so it’s not going to hand them to militants.”
Retired Air Chief Marshal Shashindra Pal Tyagi, former head of the Indian air force, expressed the same confidence about both the Indian and Pakistani arsenals.
“In India, the controls of the weapons are under different organizations,” he said. “Pakistan’s armed forces are very professional — we know, we fought them — and from all accounts, they have put a lot of safety measures in place.”
The remarks come amid concerns over tensions between India and Pakistan after terrorist attacks on India’s financial capital, Mumbai, by Pakistani-based militants.
Marshal Tyagi and Gen. Masood were part of a panel representing Global Zero, an organization that includes scores of prominent figures including former President Jimmy Carter and Jordan’s Queen Noor and is seeking an end to nuclear weapons.
Marshal Tyagi said a “trust deficit” continues to prevent closer cooperation between India and Pakistan to fight terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India blames for the Mumbai attacks.
Gen. Masood said the two neighbors, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain, still have “doubts about each other,” and the “element of distrust is still that much that it needs far greater length of the peace process to continue to move forward.”
K. Shankar Bajpai, former Indian foreign secretary, said the Mumbai siege “certainly caused a setback to the dialogue” the two countries had restarted, but the progress made in recent years should not be diminished.
Shaharyar Khan, former foreign minister of Pakistan, agreed.
“I’ve been involved in India-Pakistan dialog for a long time, and I’m firmly of the view that mistrust is ever so gradually being whittled away,” he said. “I know we’ve had steps backward, but you also have to consider the steps forward.”
The panel was led by former U.S. arms control negotiator Richard Burt.
“Even though there are political and military differences and rivalries, certain types of weaponry don’t make sense,” Mr. Burt said. “It’s hard to find a realistic military mission for those systems.”
Although similar initiatives have failed in the past, Mr. Burt said that getting rid of nuclear weapons has become a cause accepted in the political mainstream.
In the case of India and Pakistan, resolving the problems between them should not be a prerequisite for a decision to scrap their arsenals, he said.
“We are not talking about bringing India and Pakistan to a negotiation to agree to eliminate their arsenals tomorrow or next week. We can begin this process. It’s possible to take some steps and even get to zero without solving the world’s political problems,” Mr. Burt said.
“I don’t think we should hold ourselves hostage to the Indo-Pakistani situation, given the fact that 96 percent of existing stockpiles are held by the United States and Russia,” he said.
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