Source: Global Security Newswire, 5 January
Pakistani lawmakers are calling for resumption of NATO's use of their nation's territory for transporting supplies to neighbouring Afghanistan to be tied to the awarding of an atomic trade agreement with the United States, Kyodo News reported on Thursday (see GSN, March 18, 2011).
The parliamentary National Security Committee, which has been developing specifications for future Pakistan-U.S. associations following the deaths of 24 Pakistani troops in a NATO air attack last year, included the demand in recommendations to the government, the News reported.
"The committee declared that the basis of the new relationship should be conditional on the agreement to transfer civil nuclear technology to Pakistan so that Pakistan could control its energy crisis," the daily newspaper reported.
Islamabad has for years attempted to extract an atomic trade deal from Washington that would allow U.S. nuclear firms to export their products to the energy starved South Asian country. Consecutive U.S. administrations have resisted out of concern that sensitive U.S. technology and materials could be diverted to Pakistan's expanding nuclear weapons production program and in light of the nation's history as a nuclear proliferator through the operation once led by scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Pakistan argues it needs such a deal to maintain strategic parity with its nuclear-armed rival India, which earned its own civilian atomic accord with the United States in 2008.
Committee Chairman Raza Rabbani on Wednesday told journalists the recommendations were still in draft form and could be altered before they are passed on to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani (Kyodo News, Jan. 5).