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Peace brokers answer South Asia's call
for arms
By David Isenberg
One of the little noted paradoxes of the recent
crisis between India and Pakistan was that some of the
same countries desperately seeking to avert war between
the two nuclear powers were the same ones avidly seeking
to sell them weapons.
The United States,
Britain, France and Russia all sent diplomats to stop
New Delhi and Islamabad from going to war over Kashmir,
fearing it might lead to a nuclear exchange. But at the
same time, their respective military industrial
complexes were supplying India or Pakistan - or both, in
some cases - varied military goods or competing for
future arms contracts.
In April, the United
States signed a US$146-million deal with India for eight
Firefinder AN/TPQ-37 fire-finder/counter-battery radar
systems, built by Thales Raytheon Systems Corporation of
El Segundo, California.
Another 20 "big ticket"
military items were approved by the Bush administration
for sale to India. These include 40 General Electric
(GE) F404-GE-F2J3 engines and advanced avionics for the
indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program,
submarine rescue facilities and ground sensors and
electronic fencing for installation along the Line of
Control (LoC). Pakistan is also being sold these
satellite-linked sensors made by the Los Angeles-based
Cooperative Monitoring Center of Sandia Laboratories and
has unofficially been told that "low key" military sales
will resume shortly.
The US is also interested
in selling helicopters to replace the aging GKN Westland
Mk 452 Sea King fleet, P-3C multi-mission maritime
reconnaissance aircraft, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
US ambassador to India Robert Blackwill has
hinted that measures were being initiated with Congress
to release 20 arms licenses to New Delhi. Washington
earlier this year lifted restrictions on military sales
to India and Pakistan, imposed after their nuclear tests
in 1998.
Britain, which dispatched Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw to Islamabad and New Delhi to lower
tensions in the region, also sought to close the deal
with the Indian Air Force (IAF) for 66 BAE Systems Hawk
training aircraft worth well over a billion dollars.
While in New Delhi, Straw rejected news reports
that that Britain had imposed an arms embargo on India
and that it had opposed the sale of Hawk trainers. Straw
had pressed equally vehemently for the jet trainer
during his visit to India in February, following up the
sales pitch of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Defense
Secretary Geoffrey Hoon, both of whom visited India and
Pakistan this year to broker peace. And Sir Kevin
Tebbit, Britain's Permanent Under Secretary in the
Defense Ministry, too, pitched in for the BAE trainer
during a visit to Delhi earlier this year as head of a
delegation seeking to further "strategic dialogue".
In fact, as ministers warned Britons to leave
the region amid the threat of nuclear conflict over
Kashmir, Britain granted arms export licenses to India
and Pakistan throughout the recent escalation of
tensions. In some cases the number of licenses increased
from the end of last year, before the recent tensions
flared.
They were approved as India mounted its
largest military build-up in 30 years along the Kashmir
LoC after a suicide attack on the Indian parliament on
December 13, which New Delhi blamed on militants backed
by Pakistan.
At the same time, ministers and
officials were quoted as indicating Britain was clamping
down on arms sales to both countries, although Straw
insisted that exports had not been suspended.
According to Saferworld, a London-based
international security think tank, the figures revealed
the government's own criteria on granting licenses was
not being implemented rigorously. The figures reveal
that the Department of Trade and Industry issued 39
export licenses to India and four to Pakistan between
May 1 and May 20. About 25 licenses, which included
military aircraft, related equipment and components,
were granted to India in December, then three in
January, eight in February, 30 in March, 45 in April and
21 in the first three weeks of May.
Three
licenses of the same category were licensed to Pakistan
in December, one in January, 20 in March, five in April
and three in the first three weeks of May.
In
2000, Britain granted some 700 defense export licenses
to companies selling weapons to India worth around 64.5
million sterling ($98.8 million). These included
components for air-to-surface missiles, aircraft machine
guns, armored personnel carriers, combat aircraft,
torpedoes and combat helicopters. The UK also sold India
military aircraft engines, military communications
equipment, tear gas and other riot-control equipment and
air-to-surface missiles.
In the same year the UK
sold six million pounds sterling worth of weapons to
Pakistan. This included components for combat
helicopters, frigates and naval vessels, as well as
military communications equipment, military training
aircraft and military utility vehicles.
Britain
seems happy to sell the same weapons to two countries on
the brink of all-out war. Such a policy also appears to
violate the European Union code of conduct on weapons
sales. The code says that weapons must not be exported
if they could: affect regional stability; provoke or
prolong armed conflicts; be used for external
aggression; or to assert by force a territorial claim.
Given the standoff between India and Pakistan, UK
weapons sales appear to contravene all those
restrictions.
On June 1, Straw said that arms
sales to the sub-continent need not be suspended during
the present tensions because they are "not relevant" to
the current fears of war. That is hard to reconcile with
the fact that components for Jaguar bombers, supplied to
India by Britain last year, are being upgraded to give
them the capability to carry nuclear missiles. BAE has
so far licensed the production of 126 Jaguars in India.
Meanwhile, Russia, which called upon President
General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee to meet at a regional security conference at
Almaty in Kazakhstan, remains the largest military
hardware provider to India.
Around 50 of the 310
Russian T-90 main battle tanks (MBTs) that India bought
last year for around $700 million have arrived and been
absorbed in three "sabre" or strike squadrons in
regiments deployed across Rajasthan against Pakistan's
Ukrainian T 80UDs based in Sindh province.
Also,
about 10 of the 40 Su-30 Mk-I fighter aircraft, fully
upgraded to their multi-role capability with French,
Israeli and locally developed avionics and weaponry, are
scheduled to arrive soon. Almost a squadron of upgraded
MiG 21 "bis"-93 ground attack interceptor fighters are
ready. The deal for the 44,500-tonne Kiev-class Soviet
aircraft carrier, Admiral Gorshkov, and the "associated"
leasing of two Akula-class Type 971 nuclear-powered
submarines, is also nearing completion.
France,
too, is pushing its military hardware in the region at
the same time that President Jacques Chirac has spoken
with both Musharraf and Vajpayee to try and dissuade
them from the path of conflict.
Its Direction
des Constructions Navales is on the verge of closing a
deal with the Indian Navy to build six Scorepene
submarines. The two sides had last year signed a
memorandum of understanding for the Scorepenes, and
Indian navy sources said France had agreed to arm the
Scorepenes with Exocet SM 39 anti-ship missiles made by
Aerospatiale, giving the navy a decisive edge over the
Pakistanis.
The Indian air force has also opened
preliminary discussions with Dassault Aviation of France
to acquire Mirage 2005 fighter aircraft to enhance its
strike and nuclear deterrence capabilities. Official
sources in New Delhi said that the air force plans to
acquire 126 Mirage 2005s to equip seven squadrons that
will comprise the "backbone" of India's strategic
nuclear command.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co,
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