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Tuesday 1 September 2009

Indian Anti-Pak rhetoric over Nuclear Build-Up

Indian Express.com is outraged that, according to unnamed US reports, it has been

"shockingly revealed... that Pakistan is enhancing its nuclear weapons and production capabilities...Pakistan is readying a new nuclear capable ballistic missile for deployment and two nuclear capable cruise missiles. It also says that Pakistan is building two new plutonium production reactors and a second chemical separation facility at Chasma, Khushab and Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab.
Pakistan is also renewing work on a partially built separation plant at Chasma. It is believed that this secretive and substantial arsenal build-up is targeted at India."


There are vested, backward-looking parties in both India and Pakistan who maintain the rhetoric, when there are much more important issues in both countries to address. Rhetoric plays to a constituency and has some political use, but it is now past its sell-by date.

CNN-IBN gives a fuller explanation and manages to keep calm at the same time.

"An American scientist has claimed that Pakistan has increased the number of its nuclear warheads from 60 to 90 and has kept them ready for use at any time.
Hans M Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists in an article on the federation's website has also put up a picture of possible Pakistani nuclear weapons storage area about 12 km from Karachi.
The scientists say Pakistan is keeping its missiles with nuclear warheads in a completely assembled form and can launch them at a very short notice.
According to them a satellite picture shows that the Masroor Air Base near Karachi is where missiles like the medium range Shaheen maybe stored."

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