US expert advocates nuclear energy deal for Pakistan

“Obama should offer Islamabad a much more expansive US-Pakistani relationship if it helps win this war.” — File Photo

WASHINGTON: The Obama Administration should offer Pakistan a civilian nuclear energy deal as well as a trade program under a “much more expansive” US relationship with the key regional country as part of efforts to win more Pakistani cooperation toward a successful outcome of the Afghan conflict, a prominent American expert argued Tuesday.
In a policy brief, Michael E. O’Hanlon, who is director of research for the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, endorses the Obama Administration’s policy to build a relationship of trust with Pakistan but underlines that bold new measures are needed to get greater and sustained Pakistani cooperation in the anti-terror fight along the Afghan border.
“Two major incentives would have particular appeal to Pakistan. One is a civilian nuclear energy deal like that being provided to India, with full safeguards on associated reactors,” says Dr O’Hanlon, who has also authored a book on Afghanistan.
He advocates that “Pakistan’s progress on export controls in the wake of the A.Q. Khan debacle has been good enough so far to allow a provisional approval of such a deal if other things fall into place as well, including Islamabad’s compliance with any future fissile production cutoff treaty.”
On the importance of US striking a free trade accord, the expert says struggling economically; Pakistan needs such a shot in the arm.
“A trade deal could arguably do even more than aid at this point,” he observes.
However, O’ Hanlon stipulates, that Pakistan should be given these deals if the US comes out successful in Afghanistan as he claims that the Afghan militants use Pakistani tribal regions to sustain insurgency and need to be tackled strongly by Pakistan.
The expert suggests if Afghanistan turns around in a year or two, the deals can be set in motion and implemented over a longer period.
Favoring the current US policy toward Pakistan, O’ Hanlon notes in the policy brief, that “part of the right policy is to keep doing more of what the Obama administration has been doing with Pakistan -building trust, as with last fall’s strategic dialogue in Washington; increasing aid incrementally, as with the new five-year, $2 billion aid package announced during that dialogue; encouraging Pakistan-India dialogue (which would help persuade Islamabad it could safely move more military forces from its eastern border to its western regions) and coordinating militarily across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. But President Barack Obama needs to think bigger.”
The clarification that the US-led ISAF mission will continue until 2014, and indeed beyond, at the November Lisbon summit was a step in the right direction but more is needed.
“Obama should offer Islamabad a much more expansive US-Pakistani relationship if it helps win this war.”
Entitled “Improving Afghan War Strategy,” the policy brief also emphasizes promoting Afghan political organizations built around ideas and platforms, not individuals and ethnicities, in a change from longstanding American policy that could improve the quality of governance in the country.
The brief also proposes taking pressure off the bilateral US-Afghan relationship on the issue of anticorruption, largely by creation of an international advisory board consisting of prominent individuals from key developing countries like Indonesia and Tanzania that have had considerable success improving their own nations’ governance in recent times.