Thaindian News

New Delhi/Islamabad, Jan 1 (IANS) India and Pakistan Sunday exchanged a list of their nuclear installations under a two-decade-old pact, a statement said.

The exchange of lists comes a week after the two sides held a two-day expert-level meeting on conventional and nuclear Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), though such exchange of lists is customary since 1992.

“India and Pakistan today (Sunday) exchanged, through diplomatic channels simultaneously at New Delhi and Islamabad, the list of nuclear installations and facilities covered under the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations between India and Pakistan,” a release from the Indian ministry of external affairs (MEA) said in New Delhi.

The agreement, signed Dec 31, 1988, and which came into force Jan 27, 1991, provided for the two countries to inform each other of nuclear installations and facilities to be covered under the agreement on the first of January of every year.

This is the 21st consecutive exchange of such lists between the two countries, the first one having taken place Jan 1, 1992.

The two sides Sunday also exchanged lists of prisoners in jails in both countries, Pakistan’s Foreign Office said, Dawn News reported in Islamabad.

The prisoners’ lists are exchanged twice a year.

With Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal a matter of growing global concern, India had, at the expert-level meeting held in Islamabad Dec 26 and 27 last year, pressed Pakistan to enunciate its nuclear doctrine and asked it to join global efforts for concluding the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).

New Delhi had also politely spurned Pakistan’s proposal for bilateral cooperation on nuclear safety and peaceful uses of nuclear energy, saying it will have to wait till there is adequate trust and confidence between the two countries.

The Indian side was led at the talks on conventional and nuclear CBMs by MEA Joint Secretary (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran) Y.K. Sinha and Joint Secretary (Disarmament) D.B. Venkatesh Varma respectively. The Pakistani delegation was headed by Munawar Saeed Bhatti, additional secretary in Pakistan’s Foreign Office.