The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News.

The meeting earlier this month of the National Command Authority (NCA) was significant for more than one reason. Among the issues it addressed was the strategic asymmetry in South Asia. This has a crucial bearing on Pakistan’s stance in negotiations that have resumed in the United Nations’ 65-member Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT). The proposed treaty aims at banning the future production of nuclear-bomb-making fissile material.

The NCA meeting was the first to be chaired by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani after President Asif Zardari ceded chairmanship to him last year. The meeting referred to a series of adverse external developments and ramifications of India’s fuel supply agreements with several countries, while reaffirming Pakistan’s commitment to maintain a credible minimum deterrence.

The NCA meeting helped to firm up Pakistan’s negotiating position at Geneva at a significant juncture. The next important stage in the CD will be the adoption of the work programme which will determine whether substantive negotiations can begin on an the FMCT. Armed with the NCA mandate Pakistan’s envoy in Geneva, Zamir Akram, apprised members last week about Islamabad’s reservations over a treaty that only prohibits future production, as this would freeze the imbalance between Pakistan and India.

The multilateral quest for an FMCT has been a long, and thus far fruitless, one. In 1993 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a “non-discriminatory, multilateral and international and effectively verifiable treaty.” Subsequent talks in Geneva remained stalled for over a decade by wrangles in the CD over linkages made between the treaty and issues including the prevention of an arms race in outer space, negative security assurances and disarmament measures.

In the late 1990s the US contributed to this stalemate by its refusal to accept international mechanisms for verification and its insistence that National Technical Means (NTMs) were adequate to ensure compliance. The impasse was broken only last year by the Obama administration’s pledge to support international verification. Other disagreements and linkages also whittled down in 2009.

Over the past decade Pakistan played an active diplomatic role in the FMCT process. Its position evolved in the context of shifts in the global disarmament agenda, but more substantively regional security developments. It agreed in the mid-nineties to join the negotiations when the US abandoned its efforts between 1990 and 1995 to press Pakistan to accept a unilateral cap on its nuclear programme.

Pakistan’s present position on the negotiating process stems from the concern that, as currently envisaged, the proposed treaty could upset the strategic equilibrium in the region by limiting its deterrent capability at a time when India has been offered other means to escape a similar cap on the size of its nuclear arsenal.

Two developments, in particular, have changed Pakistan’s threat perceptions, and they have a bearing on its position on the FMCT. The first is the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement and the consequent NSG waiver that has allowed India to conclude agreements with countries, including Russia and France, to supply it with nuclear fuel. Given its ambition to acquire hundreds of nuclear warheads (400 is one estimated figure), India faced the dilemma of how to build this arsenal while meeting its civilian nuclear needs. This problem was resolved by its deal with the US.

Together with the NSG exemption, this places India in a position to increase its fissile material stocks qualitatively and quantitatively. It will be able to divert, if it wants to, most of its indigenous stocks to its weapons programme. It can even abrogate its international understandings in the future to redirect the externally supplied fuel meant for civilian purposes to nuclear weapons development.

The second change in the strategic environment that has influenced Islamabad’s security calculations is India’s pursuit of ballistic missile defence (BMD) by seeking external help – from Russia and Israel, as well as the United States. Given the likely prospects of India acquiring this, as well as developing a PAD (Prithvi Air Defence) capability, this also threatens to alter the strategic balance. Pakistan will be obliged to respond by accelerating its missile development programme and develop more warheads, for which it will need more fissile material.

Faced with the prospect of erosion in stable deterrence by an increasing asymmetry in stockpiles, Pakistan has consistently raised the stocks issue in the CD, calling for the negotiations to address this. The 1995 Shannon Mandate (as the report named after the Canadian special coordinator came to be called) had allowed the issue of stockpiles to be raised. But this has little negotiating import unless it is made an explicit part of the negotiating mandate.

Pakistani diplomats have long argued in the CD that unless the FMCT addresses the issue of past production of fissile material the treaty would freeze inequalities and would place Pakistan at a strategic disadvantage. Islamabad’s position in the past called for a declaration by the parties of their stockpiles, an agreement on “balance” in stocks (reflecting the requirements of different countries) and a reduction in excess stockpiles.

The latter point has been underpinned by the argument that if the US and Russia can strive for a strategic arms reduction agreement that aims to cut arsenals by reducing warheads, why not reduce the inventories of fissile material that is used to make these weapons? This would make the FMCT a genuine disarmament measure, and not just a non-proliferation instrument.

The stockpiles issue has been a hotly contested one at the CD with the nuclear-weapons states, as well as India, insisting that the treaty only deal with future production. Many non-nuclear developing countries have argued that the treaty should prevent civilian stocks and other fissile material declared in excess for military use from being diverted for use in weapons.

India’s position has changed over the years. It was one of the original co-sponsors of the 1993 UN General Assembly resolution but was quite happy to hide behind the objections raised by other countries in the CD that produced a prolonged deadlock. The nuclear tests conducted by both countries in 1998 shifted the focus away from the FMCT and slowed down these negotiations.

Subsequently, India indicated its support for the multilateral negotiating process while continuing to state – as most recently in the May 2009 statement of its permanent representative – that it “will not accept obligations …. prejudicial” to its national security interests or which “hinder” its “strategic programme, R and D as well as three-stage nuclear programme.”

Pakistan’s desire to address the stocks issue is unlikely to surmount the majority view at the CD that wants the treaty to only ban new production, leaving existing weapons-grade and civilian fissile material stockpiles as they are. Thus, from Pakistan’s perspective, the impact of the treaty as presently envisioned would be to “freeze an inequality.” As Ambassador Akram has warned, this will make the fashioning of an appropriate FMCT “a difficult challenge.”

The operational effect of the treaty once negotiated would principally be on Pakistan. Some experts argue that this is now a virtually Pakistan-specific instrument, for several reasons. First, because all the five nuclear-weapons states have already ceased fissile production. The US, UK, France and Russia have formally declared this, while China has unofficially ceased production. Israel has no nuclear competitor in the region and already has adequate stocks. India has been given the facility to acquire fuel from external sources, giving it the opportunity to vastly expand its stockpiles.

The FMCT negotiations still have many issues to iron out, including the scope of the treaty, definition of fissile material and verification procedures. But for substantive progress the process will require getting Pakistan on board in a forum that works on the principle of consensus. This will depend on how Pakistan’s principal concern can be addressed: that the treaty should not become a vehicle to constrain its strategic deterrence capability and leave it in a position of permanent disadvantage to India.