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01 June 1998

PAKISTAN'S SENATOR DEFENDS NUCLEAR TESTING

(Time for international community to step forward, Zaki says) (330)
By Rick Marshall
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- Akram Zaki, the chairman of Pakistan's Senate Foreign
Affairs Committee, spoke at the National Press Club June 1, defending
his country's recent nuclear tests, and calling upon the international
community to step forward and help India and Pakistan resolve their
differences.
India's new government "changed the psychological and military
balance" in South Asia, Zaki said. When India tested its nuclear
weapons on May 11 and 13, Pakistan waited to see how the world would
act, but "not enough was done to be sure India was deterred" and
Pakistan "found it necessary" to conduct its own nuclear tests.
It was "an act of self-defense," justified as such by the United
Nations Charter, Zaki said. "What we have done was under compulsion."
"We can understand the concern it has caused," Pakistan's ambassador
to the United States, Riaz Khokhar, said of the tests. But it is
important to focus on the causes behind the military tensions, he
said. Until the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is resolved, the
problems, which he termed a cancer, will continue.
"It is time the international community really steps forward," Khokhar
said. If the two nations are left to negotiate their differences by
themselves, "there is no hope."
Zaki also emphasized the importance of international -- and
particularly U.S. -- help in finding a way to bring problems such as
Jammu and Kashmir to negotiation. Any agreement that India and
Pakistan might reach has a better chance of being carried out if it
has the backing of the major powers, he argued.
Zaki welcomed a statement France reportedly made implying that there
were now seven declared nuclear powers, instead of the five the
Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty recognize.
Senator Zaki is part of a delegation which has come to Washington to
meet with Congressional leaders and Administration officials in the
hopes that Pakistan's position can be better understood.