UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has made a strong case for its membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG); a 48-nation body that regulates the global trade in nuclear technology, informing the UN Security Council that the exemplary measures Islamabad had taken to strengthen nuclear safety to establish its eligibility credentials.
“We expect that a non-discriminatory, criteria-based approach is followed for extending NSG membership, which strengthens the non-proliferation regime,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said on Tuesday.
Pakistan’s Ambassador to UN, Dr Maleeha Lodhi, has said that double standard on non proliferation of nuclear technology will have to be abandoned.
While speaking in a debate on “non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” Ambassador Lodhi said Pakistan had implemented a comprehensive export control regime, participated in the Nuclear Security Summit process, ratified the 2005 amendment to the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, declared unilateral moratorium on further nuclear testing and reiterated its willingness to translate it into a bilateral arrangement on non-testing with India, all of which established its eligibility to become a NSG member.
“Double standard on non proliferation of nuclear weapons will have to be forsaken. Work will have to be done on disarmament and nuclear non proliferation together. Pakistan is discharging its obligations in perspective of nuclear non proliferation in a befitting manner. Pakistan should be given membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG),” she said at the UN Security Council debate on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Time has come that we will have to work together on non-proliferation of nuclear technology, she said adding the disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation are linked to each other. She held that Pakistan was implementing UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions successfully and discharging its obligations befittingly.
The Pakistani envoy, in her remarks, said the global disarmament landscape presented a gloomy picture due to the lack of progress by the states with nuclear weapons in fulfilling their disarmament obligations. It was unrealistic to expect progress on one without movement on the other as disarmament and non-proliferation were linked.
A challenge to non-proliferation norms was the granting of discriminatory waivers, special arrangements, which denoted double standards and opened the possibility of diverting material intended for peaceful use to military purposes, she told the 15-member council.
The success of resolution 1540 (2004), which affirms that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery constitutes a threat to international peace and security owed less to its Chapter VII (enforcement) provisions than to its cooperative approach to implementation.
The differences in state capacities, such as legal and regulatory gaps and the lack of effective export control mechanisms, compounded challenges to addressing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, she said.
