New Delhi: Nadir killed after the Pahgam terror attack on 22 April with India-Pakistan relations, the two countries are now revaluating the current bilateral agreements in the diplomatic title for TAT. While India has placed the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in Pakistan on its share, it says “it” will gain the right to put all bilateral agreements with India, but is not limited to the Shimla Agreement “.
The major bilateral agreements between the two countries have an India-Pakistan nuclear establishment agreement of 1988, which formally called an agreement on the prohibition of attacks against nuclear installations and facilities, under which the two countries exchange the list of civil nuclear installations on 1 January every year. This year the 34th such exchange was seen.
This confidence-building measure (CBM) has tolerated fluctuations in bilateral relations and has targeted India crossing terrorism for more than three decades.
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In its first address by the nation, since India launched Operation Sindoor in response to the Pahalgam attack, Prime Minister Modi said on Monday, “India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail. We have only maintained our operations against Pakistan, future will depend on their behavior. Operation Sindoor is now a new policy of India which is against terrorism, a new line.” His remarks focused the 1988 agreement.
Also read: Pokharan resident stops drone opportunities from Pakistan – ‘Land where nuclear tests took place’
1988 agreement
Every year on 1 January, even at the time of war, diplomatic chil or border clashes, India and Pakistan have exchanged greeting of the new year -a list of each other’s civil nuclear facilities.
There are 22 nuclear establishments across the country in India, both citizens and military. These include establishments in Tarapur, Madras, Narora, Kakrapar, Kiga and Kudankulam.
Pakistan entered the rank of nuclear powers declared on May 28, 1998, with five underground nuclear tests in the Chgai Hills in Ras Koh region of Balochistan. It was seen as a direct response to nuclear tests by India at Pokhran earlier that month.
1 January is part of the 1988 Indo-Pakistan Agreement on the prohibition of attack against exchange nuclear installations and facilities, or simply non-honor agreement (NAA), which is a bilateral agreement, which, in fact, applies the intention of the first and second protocols of the first and second protocol.
These provisions say that establishments with dangerous forces such as dams, dikes, and nuclear power plants should not be targeted, even if they are considered a military objective, if such an attack can leave harmful forces and lead to important citizens.
Signed in 1988 and implemented in early 1991, the NAA prevented two atomic-head neighbors from attacking each other’s civil nuclear facilities. This requires annual exchange of exact places by latitude and longitude of power plants, enrichment laboratories, isotope separation units, and any site needs to have a significant amount of radioactive materials.
The goal is to avoid triggering an atomic destruction. However, the agreement does not compulsory the detailed revelations about the nature or activities of these features.
Under the agreement, “nuclear installations or facilities” have been defined as nuclear power and research reactors, fuel manufacturing units, uranium enhancement and isotopes separation plants, restructuring facilities, and any other sites with fresh or spent nuclear fuel or adequate amounts of radioactive materials.
While this exchange has occurred continuously every year, the criteria to constitute the “nuclear feature” remain unclearly defined, and there is no formal system to verify compliance in the agreement, which is according to the July 2024 report by the Iova-based non-profit Stanley Center for peace and security in 2024.
Despite its importance, the NAA is rarely recognized in global nuclear policy discussions and rarely quoted as a model for extensive nuclear risk decrease or safety structure, stated in the report.
India has repeatedly proposed to expand the agreement to include the pledge not to target civil and economic infrastructure, but Pakistan has constantly rejected such proposals.
In addition, India’s draft nuclear theory emphasizes the preventive through the danger of “unacceptable damage”. However, there is any first use policy in India.
In 2003, the draft theory was formalized.
How the agreement was implemented
According to the 2024 report by the Stanley Center, in 1981, Israel surprised the world with an anticipated airstrike on the Osirk nuclear reactor of Iraq. For Pakistan, the attack was a Wake-up call post in 1971. In the 1980s, the rumors of an Indo-Israeli plan to target Pakistan’s Kahuta nuclear facility in the 1980s deepened Islamabad’s pace only, mentioned in the 2024 report.
India, due to worrying on their behalf, the report states. Its growing citizen atomic infrastructure, which included power reactors and research labs, was unsafe for previous attacks. With the two countries moving towards nuclear capacity, it became very dangerous to miss the nuclear infrastructure or deliberately ignore the risk of strike.
The conversation started. And despite their deep opposing relations of wars, espionage, and endless controversies on Kashmir, India and Pakistan, the common land was found: mutual belief that some goals should be off-lymph even during the wars.
‘A symbolic remedy’
In practice, the agreement is largely symbolic. There is no provision to verify whether each year has been exchanged. And yet, the two countries participate quietly and continuously. The lists come, the coordinates are updated, and the agreement is re -confirmed to the year -door, quietly.
According to the report, NAA came to focus in 2022 as Russian forces had a first direct military strike at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, a working nuclear facility in history, and the world took notice.
Suddenly, a 30 -year -old South Asian Agreement, which was an art by a long -standing stresses, began to look like a model.
While the NAA lacks the verification system and provides limited transparency about the complete scope of atomic features, its flexibility and coherent implementation highlights its symbolic and practical value. For example, proposals to expand the scope of the agreement, the risk of its simplicity and reducing reliability, to incorporate important infrastructure such as dams or address terrorist threats. The NAA emerged from the context of regional and global concerns on nuclear security, especially after Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirk reactor.
It aligns with comprehensive international legal criteria, including conferences on geneva conferences and arms control treaties and physical security of nuclear materials between the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Edited by Ajit Tiwari)
Also read: India committed to no use first, but ‘depends on future conditions’: Rajnath