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India may strike if Islamists get
Pakistani nukes: Report

India could militarily intervene if Islamists gain control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons either through a coup or a civil war, a study by an American think tank says.

"The nightmare scenario of the next few years is that American and allied military operations in South or Southwest Asia end up severely destabilising the Pakistani regime. Whether due to a coup by a more pro-radical Islamic faction within the military or something close to an outright civil war, the reliability of central control of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal will be diminished," says the study 'Transforming America's Military', published by the National Defence University.

"In these circumstances, there would be the distinct prospect of Indian military intervention [with possible Israeli assistance], and the prospect of a major regional war in which the use of nuclear weapons could not be precluded," says the study by Peter Wilson, a senior political specialist at RAND, and Richard D Sokolsky, a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defence University.

India has become an "important nuclear-armed ally of the United States, providing diplomatic and material support for Operation Enduring Freedom [in Afghanistan]. US rapprochement with India is consistent with the US low-profile, long-term containment or hedging strategy aimed at China," it says.

"Pakistan has become a vital but very fragile ally in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan," it notes.

The Indian government has warmly endorsed the elements of the Strategic Framework with its emphasis on ballistic missile defences, the report says, adding New Delhi will tend to size its nuclear programme to the evolution of the Chinese arsenal and not that of Pakistan.

A robust Chinese missile modernisation programme would give advocates of a major Indian intermediate range ballistic missile build-up good political ammunition. However, it is likely that any build-up of India's nuclear capability will be severely restrained by budget limitations, the report says.

The report expects Israel to be intent on deepening the strategic relationships with Turkey and India, "a process likely to be encouraged by the United States, especially in the context of the war on terrorism".

The US and its key allies, says Sokolsky, "have accepted the fact that both Pakistan and India have become and will remain overt nuclear-armed states. Perhaps the NPT [Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty] regime as a global non-nuclear norm will be strained but not broken".

The consequences of Operation Enduring Freedom, especially the wider war against terrorism, including a possible major military campaign against Iraq, could have a profound effect on the validity of the NPT regime, the study says.

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