India upgrading its missile programme

WASHINGTON - Engineers in India are designing cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads, relying partly on
Russian missile-design assistance, a major American newspaper said in a report Thursday on Indian and
Pakistani nuclear programmes over whose expansions, it said, US officials have concerns.
"India is also trying to equip its Agni ballistic missiles with such warheads and to deploy them on submarines,"
The Washington Post said in report apparently marking the day on which Pakistan carried out its nuclear tests in
response to the Indian atomic blasts. "Its (India's) rudimentary missile-defence capability is slated for a major
upgrade next year." US intelligence and proliferation experts say India and Pakistan indicate their nuclear
programmes offer leverage in an arms race that has picked up and diversified similar to the US-USSR arms
race, the Post said.
"They are both going great guns on new systems, new materials; they are doing everything you would imagine,"
a former US intelligence official told the Post. Pakistan is expected to be ready to produce plutonium for its
nuclear arsenal sometime next year, the newspaper said despite denials by Pakistan of such reports. At the
same time, the newspaper cited US experts as saying that Pakistan's nuclear programme should not been seen
in isolation when New Delhi is advancing its systems as well as piling on to its huge array of weapons. "While
Pakistan's nuclear programme has lately attracted the most worry, because of the close proximity to the capital
of Taliban insurgents, many US experts say that it should not be considered in isolation from India's own nuclear
expansion," the Post said in the report in which it also focused on the Indian activities.
Some experts say that a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that former president George Bush signed with
India benefits the country's weapons programs, because it sanctions India's import of uranium and allows the
military to draw on enriched uranium produced by eight reactors that might otherwise be needed for civil power.
According to the Post, former Indian government officials say efforts are underway to improve and test a
powerful thermonuclear warhead, even as New Delhi adds to a growing array of aircraft, missiles and
submarines that launch them.
"Delivery system-wise, India is doing fine," said Bharat Karnad, a former member of India's National Security
Advisory Board and a professor of national security studies at New Delhi's Center for Policy Research.
The Post said the US officials and experts have expressed worry over growth of South Asian matured nuclear
programmes. Ken Luongo, a former senior adviser on nonproliferation at the Energy Department who recently
returned from meetings with Pakistani officials, said the deal exacerbated Pakistan's fears of losing a
technological race; others say that, at the least, it provided a rationalization to keep going. The report said the
US officials and experts have voiced satisfaction with the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and claimed that
the country would complete next year a heavy-water reactor at its Khushab nuclear complex. Pakistani officials
dismissed suggestions that the building represents an acceleration in South Asia's arms race. "If two are
sufficient, why build 10?" asked Brig Gen Nazir Ahmed Butt, defence attache in Pakistan's embassy in
Washington. "We cannot match warhead for warhead. We're not in a numbers game. People should not take a
technological upgrade for an expansion."