'China supplied missile parts to Pak.'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, AUG. 6. China has sent a dozen shipments of missile components to Pakistan, says The Washington Times quoting intelligence officials familiar with the transfers.

According to the report, the China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation, a state-run company, supplied components for Pakistan's Shaheen-1 and Shaheen-2 missile programmes.

American satellites monitoring the area detected a shipment on May 1 on the China-Pakistan border. By U.S. intelligence estimates, it was one of the 12 consignments sent by ship and truck since the beginning of the year.

Both the missile programmes in Pakistan are nuclear- capable and administration officials are concerned at the latest Chinese transfers seen as being violative of last November's pledge not to assist foreign missile programmes that can be used to deliver nuclear warheads. Beijing also agreed to publish a comprehensive list of export controls.

The current mood in Washington's relations with Beijing is upbeat following the ``successful'' visit of the Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, to China last week. The Bush administration has been saying that China's track record on nuclear and missile proliferation is ``mixed''.

With Congress currently on a vacation, the noise against China will not be there; but this is not to say lawmakers will be sitting quiet upon return after Labour Day in the first week of September. The latest transfers to Pakistan by China could trigger sanctions. ``We are looking at that now,'' an unnamed administration official said in The Washington Times.

A lot of attention will also be on how the Republican administration will handle the Chinese ``violations''. During the Clinton administration, Washington almost routinely said a ``determination'' was being made each time intelligence agencies came out with reports of dubious transfers to Pakistan and Iran. The Democratic administration generally refrained from taking the sanctions route on the sale of missile technology.

The question now is whether the Bush administration will be any different. Several domestic laws require the imposition of sanctions for violations under the Missile Technology Control Regime. At the same time, it is pointed out that recently in Beijing, Gen. Powell raised the issue of proliferation but did not detail the cases.

In the past few years, China's response too has been along expected lines - denial of any shipments to Pakistan, Iran or any other country; or going to making the case of not violating any existing international agreements or bilateral pledges. Beijing has been also demanding that the Bush administration relax export controls on U.S. satellites being launched on Chinese rockets in return for stricter curbs on arms transfers.

The U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, will travel to Shanghai in October for the meeting of the Asia Pacific leaders; and he will also make an official visit to Beijing.

On the one hand many of the contentious issues that led to shouting matches in the last six months seem to have subsided; at the same time, Mr. Bush is under tremendous pressure from conservative Republicans to keep the heat on China for a number of things including proliferation, human rights and Tibet.

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