'India, Pak must restrict nuclear arms race'

There's a necessity for talks between India and Pakistan, insulated from the political climate, to reduce the danger of growing nuclear arsenals and introduce transparency to prevent an arms race, said a statement adopted at the third Ottawa Dialogue held in Copenhagen on June 18 and 19.

This track two diplomacy, which engages unofficial but influential participants from India and Pakistan who can identify ideas and carry them into official circles, is led by Professor Peter Jones of the University of Ottawa, an international peace and security matters expert.

The forum gets its name from the first round of the dialogue, which was held in Ottawa. The second round was held in Bangkok last December.

The statement recommended five steps to enhance strategic stability between the two countries -- establishing a lexicon of nuclear terms, keeping all nuclear weapons at the lowest possible alert level during peacetime, setting up Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers, initiating discussion on the implications of introduction of new technologies, and including cruise missiles in the existing pre-notification agreement on missiles.

"We began over two-and-a-half-years ago, developing the idea and recruiting participants -- former army officers, academics and experts from two sides," Jones said.

"We went out to recruit people whom we saw would be most effective, including people from a cross-section of ideas. We didn't just want people who were highly supportive of the idea. We wanted skeptics as well, so that different ideas and opinions emerged from these dialogues," he said.

Measuring the impact of the three Ottawa Dialogues, he said, was tough.

"My opinion of effectiveness is developing ideas and transferring them to the government," he added. "What the governments do with those ideas is not something over which you have any control. These are new ideas. So, it takes some time for policy-makers to look at them, think over them and I suppose if some of those are adopted, that will be one measure of success. Another measure of success would be if conversations are going on between the two sides and they start thinking of how we can develop further confidence-building measures and measures to restrain the nuclear situation."

Jones does not think the recent Canada-India civilian nuclear agreement, or India's earlier agreements with the United States, France and Russia had any impact on the Ottawa Dialogue.

"We haven't discussed how relations between India and Pakistan will be impacted following the Canada-India nuclear deal," he said. "It doesn't have any impact on what we are doing. It sets the stage for saying that the nuclear situation in South Asia, the civilian and military situation is changing. What we are discussing is the bigger question of whether the export of uranium to India has the potential to trigger an arms race between India and Pakistan? That can only be constrained if the two governments sit down and start talking," he added.

"The attitude is that it doesn't matter where they get the uranium from, both countries are expanding their nuclear programs," he added. "They are expanding in terms of number of weapons, so they have to have an agreement that the weapons shouldn't go beyond a certain number."

Ottawa Dialogue participants also talked about the broader international situation -- the commitment US President Barrack Obama made in Prague to making the world nuclear weapon free and the other initiatives in the West to put more energy in disarmament.

"All our participants agreed that India and Pakistan can't be going the other way, rapidly building weapon stockpiles," he said. "They need to show that they are part of the broader international trend towards reducing the number of nuclear weapons. Within the Dialogue there's a certain measure of agreement that the two countries cannot live in an unconstrained nuclear arms race," he added.

That, Jones said, was "the main motivating factor for starting the Ottawa Dialogue."

The next round is scheduled for December.