WASHINGTON, Jan 29: America's top intelligence official has said that the tentative dialogue between India and Pakistan may stall when a new Indian government assumes office after the national elections in March.Testifying before Congress on Wednesday on the projected national security threats to the United States, CIA chief George Tenet listed South Asia as a regional trouble spot, a favourite American epithet, and said relations between India and Pakistan remain poor.
``The long-standing dispute over Kashmir remains a major sticking point. A modest India-Pakistan dialogue is underway, though progress is certain to be slow and subject to abrupt setbacks. We cannot be sure this tentative dialogue will continue when a new Indian government assumes office after national elections in March,'' Tenet said, without identifying who could be heading the new government.
Acknowledging that both countries have nuclear capabilities, Tenet said the stakes of conflict are high because both sides have or aredeveloping ballistic missile delivery systems. Although Indian and Pakistani officials say deterrence has worked for years, it would be at a risk in a crisis, he added.
On the overall threat perception, US intelligence officials said that although proliferation was the major concern in the world, the United States itself is relatively secure from the threat of war. ``The danger of nuclear attack, large-scale conventional attack and other threats to our national existence is low,'' Phyllis Oakley, assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, said in her testimony before the Senate intelligence committee.
The downgrading of threats was further substantiated by Lt Gen Patrick Hughes of the Defence Intelligence Agency, who testified that the rest of the world's nations are spending 40 percent less on their armies and on military weapons than they did a decade ago. No well-armed, technologically advanced nation is likely to make war on the US in the foreseeable future, he said.
However, Tenetsaid despite successes for US policy and US intelligence, technologies related to proliferation continued to be available, and potentially hostile states are still developing and deploying Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) related systems. Chinese defence industries are under increasing pressure to become profit-making organisations.
Conventional arms sales have lagged in recent years, encouraging the Chinese defence industry to look to WMD technology-related sales, primarily to Pakistan and Iran, in order to recoup.
There is no question that China has contributed to WMD advances in these countries, Tenet said.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
