"I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the whole sale destruction of men, women and children, as the most diabolic use of science".

Concerned Citizens of Islamabad,

Ladies and gentlemen,

What made them decide to shake the desert and Turn Mountains white?

What has changed between September 1946 when these words were articulated by Mahatma Gandhi and May 1998.

I happened to be in Larkana, dealing with the routine problems of our rural areas, lack of water, lack of health facilities, victimization of the locals by the police force and all the other rather sorry aspects of our social set-up, when I first heard the news about the Indian nuclear testing.

I was scheduled to meet the local press, where the inevitable question came up. Should Pakistan test its bomb in return?

I thought our party’s stand was clear about the issue. In our election manifesto we have clearly mentioned that the Pakistan nuclear plant must only be used for peaceful purposes. It was the same stand mentioned in the manifesto of every political party in Pakistan as opposed to the known nuclear stand of the Indian Bhartia Jantia Party.

My logical answer then was a short and firm no.

Since 11^th of May 1998, the nuclear issue has come out of the closet in South Asia. It has become a debate on every level, in forums, electronic media, street demonstrations and even in drawing rooms.

The nuclear issue has seeped deep into the very psyche of the people.

Almost every person I come across is passionately involved in the nuclear question, at a time when he or she should be concerned about the empowerment of the people through effective decentralization of power, he or she is deeply involved in an issue that is totally irrelevant to his or her human condition.

Two camps emerged from this debate. One for and one against. Both trying to project their theories about the danger of either possessing or not possessing a nuclear bomb.

A lot of material have been printed about the issue, many of it has proven that a nuclear armament race is irrelevant at least to the South Asian region due to: the short distance between India and Pakistan, the lack of funds, the lack of technology and the deplorable social state of the people of both the countries, a fact that makes the entry into a nuclear race a matter, to say the least, of second priority.

Here one should halt and examine the whole nuclear debate. By jumping to discussing the feasibility of possessing a nuclear bomb, we have taken for granted the hypotheses of possessing a nuclear energy plant in the first place.

Many tragic incidents have taken place in our world and on our planet, in the recent past, that have actually have made us wonder as to how morally, environmentally and humanely correct is it to possess a nuclear energy plant - even for peaceful purposes.

In the process of producing energy through a nuclear or atomic reaction, we are inevitably left with what is commonly known as nuclear waste from which actually the nuclear bomb is made.

If the producers do not wish to make a nuclear bomb than they get rid of that waste by burying it underground.

Even in the process of producing electricity through using the heat resulting from the nuclear reaction, the nuclear product which is usually preserved in special tubes can leak into the air and cause a lot of harm to living things.

We all remember those incidents of leaking. I personally have many European friends who were victims to the cloud of Chernobyl, which floated over Europe for a long time, and are suffering now from cancer.

Until and unless nuclear energy can be stored safely and nuclear waste can be disposed of permanently, nuclear option should not be taken up – even for peaceful purposes.

On the other hand, human nature has proven to be very destructive, due to the human error factor and the emotional states we undergo which actually put us on a different moral level than other animals. I would not say on higher moral level, because in many instances we have proven otherwise. Animals kill for survival destroys because of panic. Humans doe it for greed, gratification and ambition.

Marie Curie, Alfred Noble would have never thought that their genius discoveries would be used for such destructive ends. The unsinkable Titanic turned into a sinkable ship due to human ambition and human error. Edison, while waiting for long hours observing his first tungsten lamp could have never imagined that his awesome discoveries would be used for killing people on the electric chair and who would ever thought that medicine could be employed for a state ordained murder.

The movement of Shaheed Bhutto is first and foremost a movement for emancipation, for freedom, for justice and for the empowerment of the people. We at the Pakistan Peoples Party are unflinchingly committed to the ideals of humanist egalitarianism. We strongly believe that a great amount of betrayal has been perpetrated upon the people of Pakistan by rulers in varying garbs and hues - at times even in the name and honor of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by the very people who have come to power on his dead body or his living memory.

And now is the time to sift fact from fiction. And is the time to redefine Pakistan by redefining the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Therefore we believe, that all the steps that are necessary to save the people of this country from non-issues imposed upon their minds by farcical rulers must be taken – at all costs, even if it entails yet another martyrdom.

The nuclear issue is not the question of life and death for Pakistan and the people of Pakistan. It is at best an illusion, a concocted ideal, a deadly manifestation of false consciousness. National security, above all, means social security. And if the advocates of national security think that by constructing an illusion of nuclear power they will be able to make people live in peace and security, they are terribly mistaken.

Never ever in the history of human kind has human happiness been attained upon the debris of human deprivation. And the nuclear weapons, are a modern day manifestation of insecure rulers, militant passion for supremacy and power upon a real or perceived adversary.

It has by now become abundantly clear that in the history of the 20^th century politics, no insecure state has been able to attain security through nuclear ambitions.

Those who deny this self-evident truth deny reason, insult their own intelligence and prove a lack of imagination.

To us, the questions of Pakistan signing the CTBT, the FMCT or the NPT are questions that therefore do not require pretentious intellect or shallow morality. To us, these ostensibly complicated questions of international diplomacy require nothing but a simple and straightforward answer – go and just do it. For heaven’s sake go ahead and do it.

Even if it means doing it unilaterally. A self-assured nation does not need bombastic crutches. We do not believe in hiding behind the façade of expediency, exigency or what is normally described by narrow-minded politicians, as an act carried out in the name of supreme national interest.

The CTBT, to us, is merely a way forward, not an end in itself. The CTBT, to us, is a declaration of peaceful intent, not an act of surrender. The CTBT, to us, is an attempt to clear the way for a meaningful dialogue, not an act of self-indulgence or even a manifestation of a colonized mind. (In other words the CTBT to us is merely a piece of paper, sign it and get it out of the way).

Yes, we act locally and think globally.

Whether we sign the CTBT and the FMCT or not we are by force abiding by them since we do not have the resources to conduct more tests or produce more fissile materials.

The task of convincing the parties to give up their nuclear capabilities and a no first use of nuclear weapons becomes more complicated when it comes to the fact that the region would not be nuclear free due to the presence of the nuclear equipped American ships in the Arabian sea.

However, CTBT, FMCT and NPT would note achieve their purpose of global and future nuclear non proliferation as long as theories such as "nuclear deterrence", "balance of terror" or the theory of "Mutually Assured Destruction" aptly abbreviated into MAD are still included in the academic curriculum of the world most esteemed learning institutions, where all those nuclear antagonists have mastered their nuclear aggressive attitudes, so as to prepare the new generations, for the idea of a nuclear free world.

It is true that the Kashmir issue has acquired a certain degree of urgency, but Pakistan could have made its point vis-à-vis Kashmir in a much more powerful manner by refraining from exercising the nuclear option.

We are a nation of 140 million people, with many natural resources at our disposal and waiting to be explored for an effective utilization and an economic development. With the right policies, we could become the center of attention of the world in many fields other than the nuclear field. Only a nation that is willing to find a world of meaning within its own soul is capable of withstanding all conceivable threats to its integrity and security.

The deterrence of a war between two neighboring nations can be achieved through finding common interests rather than through menacing devices. Common interests, whether we like it or not, are simply too commonly rooted in common history and common land mass to be dismissed away by the exponents of differentials in the subcontinent. And this essential communality is destined to herald a common destiny for the Indo-Pak subcontinent.

What we are witnessing now in Europe in terms of Schengen countries and the introduction of a common currency among them, the much talked about Euro, is a living example of how Europe dealt with the bitterness in the relations amongst her countries following the second world war and made a common policy in the use of iron to prevent its use for destructive purposes towards each other.

Our nation is experiencing an acute shortage of funds in all fields, including the defense. The economics of growth is simultaneously the politics of survival and that should be the fundamental and central concern of the state of Pakistan. If at all there is a national security threat to Pakistan, it emanates from within the borders of Pakistan; from ethnic conflicts, from sectarian warfare, from unemployment, from provincial polarization, from a frightening crisis of governance and at last but not the least from the near total loss of credibility of the very state of Pakistan. If at all there is a national security threat to Pakistan, it springs forth from this historic crisis of the state.

Let us learn to look within ourselves – in search of answers that lye buried deep in the collective consciousness of the people. What do the people want? The answer to this question is indeed blowing in the air. And it is written on every single wall scattered across the breadth and length of Pakistan.

By improving our economy not only we could uplift the social conditions of our people, but keep our conventional defence into a tiptop shape, by being able to allocate more resources to it, without making the other development projects suffer.

A nuclear state were at least 40% of the people live below the poverty line in a state of absolutely crushing and soul shattering deprivation is nothing but a state with feet of clay.

A state that is incapable of making the majority of the people live a meaningful and fulfilling life and yet brandishes a weapon that is destructive enough to wipe out a whole mass of humanity must indeed be a terribly sorry state of affairs.

 Let us remould it nearer to the hearts desire.

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