President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday that since Japan was negotiating a deal with India to cooperate on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the similar cooperation should be extended to his country.
“If Japan is willing to cooperate with India in nuclear technology and (is) giving nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, I do not see any reason why we should not deserve the same,” Zardari said in an interview with the Japanese media in Islamabad ahead of his departure for a three-day visit to Japan, published in leading English newspapers here.
“I do not know what questions would be raised during discussion. It depends,” he said when asked if he will raise the question of nuclear technology cooperation during the visit.
President Zardari recognizes that nuclear power is a sensitive issue for the Japanese people and government.
Neither India nor Pakistan are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and the talks between Japan and India have triggered an outcry from survivors of the 1945 US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who fear such a deal will hamper global efforts to bring about a world without nuclear weapons.
Japanese firms, however, are keen to export nuclear power generation technology and related equipment to India, which plans to build 20 new nuclear power plants by 2020.
The President said Pakistan never wanted to go nuclear but it was forced to do so when arch rival India detonated a nuclear device in 1974 and again in 1998.
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