Apparently the failure of the US to place the same sanctions on China are to late to stop Pakistan’s highly developed missile programme and a slap in the face for India!
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/24home4.htm
US missile waiver to China only hurts India
By Manoj Joshi
NEW DELHI: US President Bill Clinton’s parting gift to China seems to be a sock on India’s jaw. Tuesday’s synchronised announcement from Beijing that it would not assist any country in acquiring or developing nuclear-capable missiles, and from Washington that it was waiving Missile Technology Control Regime sanctions as a reward, is tantamount to shutting the stable after the horse has bolted.
Sanctions, however, remain on those who received the missiles, mainly Pakistan. But considering that the announcement has come in the dying days of the Clinton administration, it is to be seen just how credible it is.
Since 1993 when the US first learnt about the export of M-11 missiles to Pakistan, Washington had been `determining’ whether or not missiles were indeed transferred, and whether these were of the M-11 category.
US spokesman Richard Boucher, making the latest announcement, coolly admitted for the first time that ``some Chinese and Pakistani entities were involved in transfers of Missile Technology Control Regime category 1 items - that is complete missiles, their major subsystems or their production facilities’'. In the interest of getting China to behave better, the US President was waiving the sanctions. This is the same President who has refused so far to lift sanctions on innocuous items like helicopter spare parts in the case of India.
What is amazing is that the US is now treating the matter of Chinese missile proliferation as closed. This is somewhat naive, considering that the Chinese had earlier made a similar commitment in October 1994 to the then secretary of defence William Perry, and have been making one annually for the past several years.
However, this has not stopped US intelligence agencies from reporting that far from curbing missile proliferation, the Chinese have gone out of their way to help Pakistan. As recently as August this year, the CIA semi-annual report to the US Congress noted that through 1999 Chinese export of missile-related material to Islamabad has continued.
All the damage that China had to do to India has been done by arming Pakistan with some 100 M-11 (Shaheen I) and scores of M-9 (Shaheen II) misiles. It has even helped set up a factory at Fatejung, outside Rawalpindi.
Ironically, this development came on a day when Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called on India not to weaponise further and to be more forthcoming about its nuclear development. She said that transparency would help any new administration to lift sanctions. Despite tall claims from South Block, it is clear that the US is simply unable or not willing to see security in South Asia from New Delhi’s perspective.