Himalayan News Service

Islamabad, April 24:

The European Union (EU) is to ask President Pervez Musharraf to accept responsibility for nuclear proliferation because Pakistan’s nuclear programme was under the ‘totally unaccountable control of the army’. Pakistan will also be asked for details of its May 30, 1998, nuclear tests that ‘showed traces of plutonium and is thought by some to have been a joint test for a North Korean nuclear weapon’. The information would be sought in one of two resolutions the EU is to forward to Pakistan, The News daily reported today in a dispatch from Brussels.

The first resolution is on a EU-Pakistan trade pact and the other on the democracy and rights situation in the country. The nuclear issue would figure in the second resolution, the newspaper said. “An urgent request to Pakistan regarding the country’s nuclear tests has been added as paragraph 8-a in the resolution on democracy and human rights,” The News said.The paragraph reads: “(The European parliament) draws attention to serious concerns of the international community about Pakistan’s role in the proliferation of nuclear weapons, with the allegations

and evidence against Pakistan hardening day by day; “while acknowledging that President Musharraf has been right to insist upon a detailed investigation and that he is right when he claims that the Khan ‘incident’ happened because of the secretive nature of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme, highlights the fact that President Musharraf (and the rest of the world) should also recognise that nuclear proliferation happened because the nuclear programme was under the totally unaccountable control of the army;

“urgently requests further information from Pakistan regarding the nuclear test on May 30, 1998, in Balochistan which showed traces of plutonium and which is thought by some to have been a joint test for a North Korean nuclear weapon.” The EU presidency and the commission would take up the issue with the Pakistani government after the official texts of both the resolutions, together with the amendments, are conveyed to Islamabad by the president of the European parliament. “We have no choice but to follow the instruction of the parliament on all points which are stipulated in the unanimously approved resolutions and amendments,” the newspaper quoted a EU official as saying.