Pakistan may push for vote at IAEA

NEW DELHI: Pakistan has not made a formal announcement but India is not ruling out Islamabad pushing for a vote at Friday’s meeting of the IAEA board of governors in Vienna, despite immense US pressure to desist.

Pakistan will not be able to stop the safeguards agreement going through because India has the backing of most of the 35-nation board. However, New Delhi would prefer not to have a division because it would give a fillip to the strong non-proliferation lobby in the crucial 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group.

It is, however, difficult for Pakistan now to back out from calling for a vote because it regards the special treatment given to India as a discriminatory. Ever since the negotiations for the nuclear deal between India and the US began, Pakistan has been asking for a similar deal.

It began with a letter to President Pervez Musharraf two years ago by Pakistan’s nuclear scientists, demanding a similar deal going with Washington. The US flatly rejected it because of Pakistan’s non-proliferation record. Its top scientist AQ Khan is still in the dock for helping the North Korean nuclear project.

It is difficult for any government in Pakistan not to ask for a similar deal. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, now on a visit to Washington, also did that. “There should be no discrimination. If they want to give such nuclear status to India, we expect the same for Pakistan,” Gilani told Richard N. Haass, president of the council on foreign relations at
a meeting in Washington.