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US contemplating repeal of Pressler Amendment to deter Pak N-tests

In an attempt to dissuade Pakistan from resorting to a nuclear test, some US law-makers appear to favour the idea of repealing the Pressler Amendment, a Pakistan-specific non-proliferation measure, which is the major obstacle in the way of American economic and military aid to Islamabad.

Former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey made the suggestion yesterday as a measure to dissuade Pakistan from testing a nuclear device to level up with its rival, India. He was testifying before the senate foreign relations committee's panel on Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.

Panel chairman Sam Brownback, a Republican, welcomed the idea and promised to consider it, and several other senators later agreed with him, giving rise to the impression that they might take it up on the floor of the senate at an appropriate time.

In October 1990, the then president George Bush invoked the 1985 law to deny economic and military aid to Pakistan in protest against Islamabad's nuclear programme. Along with the aid cut, which used to be about $ 650 million a year in the 1980s, the US withheld the delivery of military equipment, including 28 F-16 fighter jets, worth over a billion dollars, paid in advance by Pakistan towards the cost.

After the invocation of the Pressler Amendment, Pakistan neither got its money back nor the F-16s, leading to a dispute between the two countries. Three years ago, Congress adopted the Brown Amendment, which partially resolved the issue. But Pakistan is yet to get its 28 F-16s.

Pakistan's stock has suddenly gone up in the United States after India conducted its nuclear tests. Woolsey argued that the abrogation of the Pressler Amendment would take away Pakistan's grievances, and the Clinton administration would then be in a better position to entertain its plea against resorting to nuclear testing.

Earlier, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs Karl F Inderfurth, in his testimony, said, ''We will need to work closely and co-operatively with Pakistan whom we judge also to have the capacity to test a nuclear device, to show restraint in the face of India's provocative action.''

''Pakistan has the opportunity now to take the statesman-like course in South Asia and to demonstrate that it is committed to a peaceful future in the subcontinent,'' he added.

Inderfurth hoped that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief would earn the gratitude of the international community and would actually enhance his own status by following a policy of restraint.

President Clinton also spoke to Sharief, to urge him against going in for a nuclear test.

Later, he dispatched Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot to Pakistan on a mission to persuade Pakistan not to conduct nuclear weapons tests to match those by India.

State Department spokesman James Rubin said the president had a very constructive discussion with Sharief and as a result of that discussion, a mission left for Islamabad last evening.

It is expected that Pakistan would suffer the same financial sanctions if it went in for the bomb as India did yesterday -- a prohibition on private American bank loans, as well as the threat of the loss of World Bank and International Monetary Fund assistance. The World Bank has $ 4.4 billion worth of programmes under way in Pakistan, and the IMF has offered Pakistan a new $ 1.56 billion three-year loan programme, of which only about $ 208 million has been disbursed. The money not already in the pipeline would be barred.

India also lost American military and economic aid, which totalled $ 145 million this year. The United States already ended all military and economic aid to Pakistan in 1990, after it declared Pakistan capable of making nuclear weapons.

UNI

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