The Hindu : A frightening situation, says Armitage

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 02, 2003

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International

A frightening situation, says Armitage

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington May 1. The global security architecture that served the international system ``satisfactorily'' and ``kept us safe'' is showing ``some signs of age'', argues the United States Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage.

``Just look at the headlines. You will see India and Pakistan with a thousand-mile shared border and a 50-year history of enmity and war — a situation that is truly frightening when you add into the mix nuclear weapons outside the system of international restraints,'' Mr. Armitage said in an address at the National Defence University.

Mr. Armitage, who is visiting the subcontinent next week, did not have India and Pakistan as the major focus of his theme — rather the Deputy-Secretary was speaking of South Asia in the context of the changing global security architecture as it pertained to such agreements as the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Conventions and organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

``But as we have seen so dramatically in recent days, that architecture is showing signs of age,'' Mr. Armitage argued referring to India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.

``Of course, you'll see North Korea in the headlines — a blighted nation led by a dictator who defies his international commitments and fiddles with nuclear threats. And you'll see Iran where an entire generation is ready for change, while elements of a violent and backward past look to buy and to build weapons of mass destruction despite their solemn obligations to the contrary,'' Mr. Armitage stressed.

``And, of course, in the headlines you will certainly see Iraq,'' which indeed was the prime focus of Mr. Armitage's address to the National Defence University. He not only went on to defend the U.S.-led military action against Iraq but to expand on some of the remaining challenges that included political and economic rehabilitation and reconstruction, not to forget the hunting down of terrorists and looking for weapons of mass destruction.

On Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Armitage said he was ``extraordinarily confident'' that Iraq had those capabilities.

``The evidence of Saddam Hussein's programmes is likely to be spread across many hundreds and even possibly thousands of sites in Iraq. It is going to take us months to find this material, but find it we will,'' the senior official said.

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