ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI: The governments of Pakistan and India yesterday exchanged lists of their respective nuclear installations and facilities in accordance with Article-II of the Agreement on Prohibition of Attacks against Nuclear Installations and Facilities between Pakistan and India of Dec. 31, 1988.
According to an official statement Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs handed over the list of Pakistan’s nuclear installations and facilities to an officer of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad at the Foreign Office yesterday morning. The Indian side handed over their list to an officer of Pakistan High Commission at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi soon after.
The two countries have routinely exchanged these lists on the first day of the year since 1992 under an agreement that was signed in 1988. Yesterday’s exchange came at a time of high tension between the nuclear-armed nations following the November attacks in Mumbai that left 179 people dead.
“The lists have been exchanged at the foreign ministries in New Delhi and Islamabad,” a spokesman for the Foreign Office in Islamabad, Mohammad Sadiq, told reporters in Islamabad.
The “Agreement on Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities” was signed between India and Pakistan by the then Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 31, 1998. It entered into force on Jan. 27, 1991. “Under the agreement, the two countries, on first January of every calendar year, are to inform each other of Nuclear Installations and Facilities to be covered by the agreement,” a press release from Indian Ministry of External Affairs stated. “The first such exchange of lists took place on Jan. 1, 1992. This is the eighteenth consecutive time that both countries have exchanged such a list,” the statement said.
— With input from Nilofar Suhrawardy
