TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022005.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9KB | 185 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 44

ARMS CONTROL

Two Tales of Skulduggery


As the world worries about Iraq's nuclear desires, Brazil and
Pakistan illustrate why proliferation is mushrooming

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Edward W. Desmond/Islamabad,
John Maier/Rio de Janeiro and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington


    The military face-off in the Persian Gulf does seem, as
George Bush puts it, to be Iraq vs. the world. Twenty-four
countries have sent powerful armies, fleets and air squadrons
to confront a nation of 17 million people. If anyone needed
proof that the days of old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy are
gone, that should fill the bill. Iraq, along with many other
Third World countries, has acquired such sophisticated,
destructive armaments that even a superpower feels more
comfortable about standing up to Baghdad with the help of
allies.

    Now a new stage in regional arms races is approaching. One
reason Western governments are determined to deal with the
threat from Iraq is that Saddam Hussein is only a few years
away from developing nuclear weapons and accurate medium-range
missiles to deliver them. The British TV network Channel 4
reported last week that Baghdad may have discovered uranium in
northeastern Iraq and may already be operating an enrichment
plant there. If the report is true, Saddam is poised to develop
a nuclear weapon sooner than most experts have predicted.

    According to CIA Director William Webster, "At least 15
developing countries will be producing their own ballistic
missiles" by the end of the decade. Iraq is not the only one
of them with nuclear ambitions. Two others:


    PAKISTAN. Although the Bush Administration is not actually
saying so, it has concluded that Pakistan has the atom bomb.*
Washington's silence is eloquent. In order to continue
supplying military and economic aid, Bush must certify to
Congress that Pakistan does not possess nuclear weapons. Last
year Bush did so; this year he did not. Military assistance and
all new aid -- a potential $564 million for this fiscal year
-- has been cut off.

    Pakistan's leaders routinely pledge that the country is not
building the Bomb. In fact, it began pursuing nuclear arms in
earnest after its neighbor and rival, India, exploded a test
device in 1974. Pakistan has been producing weapons-grade
uranium since 1986. Most analysts have been convinced for
several years that the country has had on hand all the
components necessary to make bombs. Last year Pakistan tested
two new ballistic missiles. Leonard S. Spector, senior associate
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in
Washington, estimates that Pakistan's arsenal could contain up
to 10 bombs of about the same yield as those the U.S. dropped
on Japan in 1945.

    The White House has apparently drawn the same conclusion.
"Pakistan has gone past the line used by Congress and the
Administration to define possession," says a senior U.S.
diplomat. "They keep saying one thing and doing another and
getting caught." Spector believes that the threshold Pakistan
crossed was turning enriched uranium into metal cores needed
for bombs, which it did last summer.

    Still, the Administration is not reconciled to cutting
Pakistan off permanently. Islamabad is the main link to
U.S.-supplied mujahedin guerrillas in Afghanistan and the
contributor of 2,000 troops to the gulf buildup. Two weeks ago,
State Department officials sounded out Congress on extending
aid without certification until elections are held in Pakistan
next week. Legislators refused to go along with a waiver.

    In Islamabad the caretaker government of Prime Minister
Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi was startled by the aid cutoff. Some
Pakistani officials do not believe Washington is serious,
because it needs Islamabad's help in the gulf. Others chalk it
up to irritation on Capitol Hill at the dismissal of former
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on corruption charges. If
elections are open and fair, they believe, the "political
problems in Washington" will ease.

    Tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is intense,
and with war between them a real possibility, neither is likely
to halt its nuclear weapons program. Spector estimates the
Indian nuclear arsenal at 40 to 60 bombs. Pakistan sees its
weapons as a deterrent to India's nuclear and conventional
military superiority.

    Some American officials are suggesting that they are
prepared to rewrite the rules for Pakistan. Cutting off
assistance, says a senior U.S. diplomat, "could be provocative
and produce more in the nuclear field than continuing aid
would." Now that Pakistan has the Bomb, he argues, the U.S.
should strive for "confidence that the program is frozen" and
not expanded to build more and bigger weapons.

    But antiproliferation has become a more popular cause since
Iraq invaded Kuwait, and it is not certain that Congress will
move the goalposts in the Administration's direction.
Congressional staff members say they expect the White House to
look for a compromise once the newly elected government has
been formed. "The Pakistanis," says a Capitol Hill staffer,
"probably assume we'll find a way to resume aid, but I'm not
at all sure it's going to happen." Regardless of the outcome
of the debate on the Hill, of course, Pakistan will remain a
nuclear power.


    BRAZIL. Like Pakistan, Brazil solemnly denied for years that
it had an atom bomb program. The country's new civilian
President, Fernando Collor de Mello, has admitted publicly that
such a military effort was under way, and has ordered it closed
down. He shoveled a symbolic two scoops of lime into a
1,050-ft. test-site shaft last month and ordered the site
closed.

    Under military rule from 1964 to 1985, Brazil launched its
nuclear program in the 1970s. There is no clear explanation why
the country set out to build the Bomb, a project that has cost
hundreds of millions of dollars, but nationalism and the desire
to become a regional superpower had a lot to do with it.

    In 1987 the government announced that it was able to produce
uranium enriched enough to fuel power reactors. The program
was, of course, "exclusively peaceful." Brazil signed
cooperation agreements on nuclear technology with Iraq in 1981
and China in 1984. Until their return two weeks ago, 21
Brazilian rocketry engineers had spent 18 months in Iraq
working to improve Baghdad's missiles.

    For all the recent public statements, experts both inside
and outside Brazil remain less than convinced that the country
is finally out of the Bomb business. The Collor government
still refuses to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty --
"an unjust instrument" because it does not apply to
acknowledged nuclear powers, the Foreign Ministry says. There
are also doubts about whether the government controls the
military.

    "The armed forces," says Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, a nuclear
specialist at the Brazilian Physics Society, "are continuing
their nuclear programs." If funds for them are not halted, Rosa
predicts, Brazil's military could produce a Hiroshima-size bomb
in a year or two. Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin
Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington think tank,
agrees. "The State Department has not been willing to recognize
that Brazil is a proliferation risk," he says.

    Last week Senator Bob Kasten of Wisconsin focused on an
application by Embraer, a Brazilian aerospace firm that has
sold weapons to Iraq, to obtain supercomputer technology from
IBM. The Senate passed Kasten's amendment barring supercomputer
exports to Brazil and any other country aiding Iraq. The White
House opposes the amendment as too broad and considers it a
restriction of the President's powers in foreign relations.

    How the U.S. government and others decide such questions as
the export of advanced technology helps to determine whether
countries like Brazil will become nuclear missile powers.
Usually the decisions are made on short-term foreign policy
grounds -- the need to give Collor a pat on the back, the
desire to be involved with Brazil's development. But the
technology is long term, and the entire world must live with
the consequences.


* The five declared nuclear powers are the U.S., the U.S.S.R.,