France to Sell Nuclear Plant to Pakistan

Breaking ranks with its Western allies on the issue of nuclear proliferation in the Third World, France on Wednesday approved the sale of a nuclear power plant to Pakistan, a country many experts believe has an active nuclear weapons development program.

In a joint press conference in Islamabad with Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, French President Francois Mitterrand announced, “France is committed to authorize French industrial enterprises, in possible cooperation with one or several foreign partners, to make a technical and commercial offer for the sale of a nuclear power plant to Pakistan.”

Mitterrand, on a four-day visit to Pakistan, added that the offer is “subject to international norms and, notably, controls and guarantees that apply to all exportation of nuclear material.”

Bhutto agreed that the plant will be “open to all international safeguards and monitoring teams.”

However, since 1974, when neighboring India exploded its own nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert, Pakistan has been accused of numerous violations of national and international laws involving the export of nuclear weapons materials in an apparent race to match its archrival.

Because of fears regarding Pakistan’s weapons program, the U.S. government in 1978 persuaded France to halt construction of a plutonium extraction plant that a French company had contracted to build and for which the Pakistanis had already partly paid. During Mitterrand’s visit, the issue of the canceled contract and the money has been a key test for the shaky Bhutto government.

Both Pakistan and India have refused to sign the international agreement on nuclear non-proliferation. Since 1980, when West Germany agreed to build a nuclear power plant in Argentina, all Western countries possessing nuclear technology, including France and the United States, have maintained an unofficial embargo against selling large-scale nuclear projects to all countries in the Third World that have not signed the treaty.

“There were no sales of reactors and no major nuclear fuel contracts by Western countries since 1980,” said Leonard Spector, a specialist on nuclear proliferation with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Interviewed by telephone, Spector contended that the French proposal, although couched in terms of international safety and inspection procedures, would contribute to a dangerously escalating spread of materials that could be used in the making of nuclear weapons.

“Coming after all we know about Pakistan’s nuclear program,” Spector said, “it is surprising to see a European country break ranks with other suppliers and make a sale that appears to condone the Pakistan behavior.”

At its nuclear research facility in Kahuta, near Islamabad, Pakistani scientists are believed to have developed a uranium enrichment plant that is capable of isolating an isotope found in normal uranium and concentrating it into weapons-grade material. They have also been accused of using another small reactor, supplied by the United States, to produce tritium, another material used in nuclear weapons.

Since 1980, Pakistanis or suspected Pakistani agents have been charged in the United States and several European countries with attempting to smuggle materials that could be used in nuclear weapons development. In 1985, Pakistani Nazir Vaid was arrested in Houston for attempting to smuggle high-speed switches used in nuclear weapons to his country.

Some doomsday scenarios about a future nuclear war begin in the India-Pakistan region. In recent weeks, in fact, the two countries have been involved in a heated war of words and saber-rattling over Kashmir, a mountainous region with a mostly Muslim population. Pakistan controls the northern part of the region and India the southern part. The issue has been at the heart of two wars between the countries.

However, Spector noted that France follows the Soviet Union and China in pledging nuclear projects in the region. In 1988, the Soviet Union, which until then had participated in the unofficial embargo of developing countries that have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, agreed to sell India two nuclear power plants. The agreement was subject to international inspection, and the Soviets added the unusual provision that they would take back all the spent nuclear fuel so that it could not be converted into weapons-grade material.

Late last year, the Chinese government offered to assist Pakistan in the construction of two nuclear power plants. Many believe the Chinese have been involved in Pakistan’s efforts to build nuclear weapons, particularly in the technology for a missile delivery system.

France is second in the world behind the United States in the use of nuclear power for generating electricity--in fact, it derives a larger percentage of its power from nuclear facilities than does the United States--and has a highly developed industry known for its aggressive sales in sometimes controversial settings.

The French nuclear industry, for example, assisted in the construction of the Iraqi nuclear power plant that was destroyed by Israeli jets in a 1981 raid after the government of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin asserted that Iraq planned to use the facility to develop nuclear weapons, the so-called Islamic bomb.

BACKGROUND

The United States and the Soviet Union signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. More than 125 other countries have since ratified it. Two nuclear nations, China and France, declined to join, and so did several nations considered capable of developing such weapons. The treaty requires signatory nations that do not have nuclear weapons to pledge that they will not develop or acquire them. Nuclear supplier nations agree not to help non-nuclear nations acquire nuclear arms. Washington and Moscow monitor the treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency enforces non-proliferation treaty safeguards to prevent diversion of uranium and plutonium from peaceful purposes to weapons.