PAKISTAN HAS claimed that the launch by India of a locally designed nuclear-powered submarine at the weekend will threaten regional peace and security and provoke an atomic arms race in south Asia.
The submarine’s launch will make India the sixth country to build and operate such a vessel other than the five acknowledged atomic weapon powers of Britain, China, France, Russia and the US.
“The continued induction of new lethal weapon systems by India is detrimental to regional peace and stability,” foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit said in Islamabad on Monday, referring to the Indian navy’s launch of the 6,000-tonne nuclear-power submarine at Vishkhapatnam on its east coast a day earlier.
Pakistan navy spokesman Capt Abid Majeed Butt said the submarine’s launch was a “destabilising step” that would “jeopardise the security paradigm of the entire Indian Ocean region” and warned of a possible regional strategic arms race.
Christened INS Arihant (Destroyer of Enemies) the nuclear submarine was launched by prime minister Manmohan Singh’s wife, Gursharan Kaur, into the Bay of Bengal by breaking an auspicious coconut against its hull. It is the first of three such vessels India plans on constructing.
Officials said however that it would take at least two years or more before the submarine, developed with close Russian co-operation at a cost of $6.25 billion, was commissioned into service.
In the intervening period, naval engineers would test and validate all its systems, which would be followed by extended harbour and later sea and weapon trials.
The 110-metre vessel, which forms the crucial third leg of India’s strategic deterrence, which includes a triad of nuclear weapons deliverable by air, mobile, land-based platforms and sea-based assets, can carry 12 submarine-launched ballistic missiles with a range of 700km that are still being developed.
Mr Singh said India had no aggressive designs on anyone.
India’s nuclear submarine programme gained impetus after it leased a Soviet Charlie-I class boat for three years till 1991 to gain operational experience on such vessels, which can remain underwater for long periods and are hard if not impossible to detect.
Plans to similarly lease additional nuclear submarines thereafter were aborted after the Soviet Union disintegrated but were revived after the navy signed an agreement in January 2004 to lease two Russian Akula-class nuclear submarines for 10 years.
Thereafter, the navy opted to lease only one submarine for about $600-700 million which is expected to be delivered, by the year end.
International treaties forbid the sale of nuclear submarines, but leases were permitted provided the vessels were not armed with missiles of over 300km range.
India is profoundly concerned over China’s rapid entry into the Indian Ocean region.