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Pakistan declared in January that it had strengthened its opposition to negotiating a treaty banning the production of fissile material as it prepared to bolster its nuclear arsenal.
Islamabad's position threatens to prolong a 14-year stalemate in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the United Nations' arms control negotiating body, which operates on a consensus basis. Pakistan has been the only country blocking the start of negotiations on a so-called fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT) at the CD for more than two years, leading some of the body's 65 member states to search for ways around the Pakistani roadblock, including holding negotiations outside the CD.
Zamir Akram, Pakistan's ambassador to the CD, reiterated in a Jan. 25 statement that Pakistan opposes opening negotiations on an FMCT in the CD because of a 2008 agreement by the world's key nuclear technology suppliers to lift long-standing restrictions on nuclear trade with India. (See ACT, October 2008.) This action, he said, "will further accentuate the asymmetry in fissile materials stockpiles in the region, to the detriment of Pakistan's security interests."
Pakistan and other critics of the move by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which now has 46 members, have argued that, because India now has access to the international nuclear market, it can purchase foreign uranium for its nuclear power reactors and therefore keep its limited domestic uranium reserves for its military program, potentially allowing it to field a larger nuclear arsenal.
Islamabad has maintained that a fissile material ban must cover existing stocks of fissile material instead of simply halting future production, a position backed by several other CD members, primarily from the developing world. Most nuclear weapons possessors, including India, insist on a production cutoff that does not address current stockpiles.
Akram added that Pakistan's opposition was further hardened by a U.S. call for India's eventual admission to the NSG, a move he characterized as an "irresponsible undertaking" that "shall further destabilize security in...