Fallout of US-India nuke deal

China's agreement to help Pakistan build two nuclear power plants is prompting warnings that the new US-India civilian nuclear deal is already pushing other countries to pursue their own nuclear relationships.

The concern among South Asia experts and nonproliferation advocates is that the American deal allowing India to pursue an expanded civilian nuclear program with limited safeguards is prompting other countries in a volatile region to seek a similar deal – something the US had said would not happen.

"You can't help but hear about China supplying Pakistan with nuclear power plants and see it as a reaction to the US-India deal," says Michael Krepon, a South Asia nuclear proliferation expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington. "Pakistan is desperate for energy, as is India, but there are lower-cost and shorter-timeline options for producing it, so there is something else going on here and in the Middle East."

That "something else" – whether a result of Iran pursuing a nuclear program it claims is peaceful or Saudi Arabia talking nuclear power with the US – is a regional scramble to counterbalance the nuclear plans of often untrusted neighbors. In the case of Pakistan, it's the pursuit of a counterweight to offset the expanding US-India strategic partnership – particularly in the nuclear realm – through a similar, though less ambitious, partnership with China.

Announcement of China's intentions to add two nuclear plants to the Chinese-built one Pakistan already has came during a visit by Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, to Beijing last week.

Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, told reporters after the visit that Chinese officials are sympathetic to Pakistan's concerns about the "discriminatory nature" of the US-India deal. He suggested China, Pakistan's longtime ally, was acting partly in the interest of a balance of power in South Asia.

US had claimed no nuclear race

Still, the announcement left many questions unanswered, regional analysts say, including how Pakistan would pay for the projects when it is in a deep economic crisis and seeking aid from the International Monetary Fund to avoid defaulting on billions of dollars in debt.

Mr. Zardari returned to Islamabad without the billions in loans he is believed to have sought from China, so speculation has arisen that the nuclear deal was something of a consolation prize. "It could be a political fig leaf, since Zardari didn't get the financial package he wanted, or China could be legitimately concerned about the US-India deal, it's hard to know," says Jon Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

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