Union to press Pakistan and India on nuclear pact date

Date: 29/10/1998

By Shada Islam

THE EU will press India and Pakistan to set a date for signing the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty at high-level meetings next month.

Both countries conducted nuclear tests in May this year, but said in September that they were prepared to initial the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). However, neither has set a date for signing the pact.

EU foreign ministers appealed to them to do so at a meeting with representatives of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, which includes India and Pakistan, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York late last month.

That message will be conveyed even more forcefully when an EU ministerial troika meets Indian government representatives in Delhi in early November and at a meeting between senior officials from the Union and Pakistan in Vienna later in the month.

Officials say the EU is going ahead with both encounters, which were planned before the tests, because it wants to keep open all channels of communication with Delhi and Islamabad. "In essence this means business as usual with both countries," said one Union diplomat.

Despite their outrage at the nuclear tests, most EU member states believe that dialogue will give the Union greater leverage on the subcontinent.

It reflects EU recognition that India and Pakistan are important players both on the world stage and in Asia. The Union's pleas are more likely to be listened to than exhortations from the US, given Washington's decision in May to impose economic sanctions on India and Pakistan. The EU, by contrast, has refused to stop its aid programmes in both countries.

In another sign of the Union's reluctance to hamper economic development in South Asia, the European Commission has not followed up on suggestions made earlier this year that developing countries which conduct nuclear tests should lose access to the EU's concessional trade regime known as the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP).

While relations with India are back to normal, the Commission is awaiting Union governments' approval to reactivate procedures for signing a new cooperation agreement with Pakistan.