COLOMBO, 15 September 2003 — Pakistan warned yesterday that it would do whatever was needed to match any advanced weapons systems Israel may sell to nuclear neighbor India.
Pakistan has voiced concern about Israeli help for its rival, especially after a visit to India last week by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon raised prospects of closer defense ties between the two.
“We will do whatever is required to make sure that the minimum credible balance is maintained. We’ve done that for 56 years,” Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri told Reuters.
He called on the United States “to prevent Israel from trying to introduce newer weapons systems into South Asia because we will match, we will create a credible deterrence come what may”.
Kasuri was in Colombo to deliver an invitation to a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Islamabad in January.
Ties between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, which nearly went to war for a fourth time last year, have improved slightly in recent months but concerns remain over continuing bloodshed in disputed Kashmir.
Sharon’s visit was expected to advance defense deals, including the sale of an Israeli airborne early warning radar system worth more than $1 billion that would put large parts of Pakistan under Indian surveillance.
India also wants to buy the $2.5 billion Arrow anti-ballistic missile system from Israel, but has yet to win US approval.
Kasuri will visit India next month to invite Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the January meeting, but did not know if he would meet his Indian counterpart, Yashwant Sinha.
Sinha was quoted in the Hindustan Times newspaper yesterday as ruling out talks with Pakistan unless it stops what he called “cross-border terrorism”, saying the military regime in Islamabad was a stumbling block to peace.
Kasuri said he hoped to meet Sinha.
“The ball is in India’s court, wherever I have gone I have meetings. It makes eminent sense to talk,” he said. Kasuri also repeated Islamabad’s concerns that conditions were not right to send Pakistani troops to Iraq, as requested by the United States.
Pakistan wants a stronger UN mandate and for other Muslim countries to also send troops. “This sort of thing will make it more acceptable to our people,” he said.
Besides Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, other SAARC members are Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.
The 12th SAARC summit was postponed from last January after India declined to go because of tension with Pakistan.
There are hopes January’s meeting will take place after the two recently restored full diplomatic links and resumed a cross-border bus service that was suspended after a bloody December 2001 raid on the Indian Parliament that India blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
