PM led N-Command meeting on Saturday

NEW DELHI: The top-level security meeting held by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last Saturday was actually a meeting of Nuclear Command Authority
(NCA). The meeting, kept under wraps so as not to fuel the current war hysteria between India and Pakistan, coincided with the first strong sign of Islamabad backtracking on its promise to crack down on the masterminds of 26/11. Sources, however, denied the NCA meeting on December 20 had anything to do with the current stand-off with Pakistan in wake of the Mumbai terror strikes. They, in fact, stressed the meeting's "only intention'' was "to take decisions on the further consolidation of India's nuclear deterrence''. The UPA government this week has tried to play down apprehensions of an imminent military conflagration, with the PM making it clear on Tuesday that "nobody wanted war''. Cautioning against reading much into what they called "a routine meeting'', the sources pointed to the "no-first-use'' policy that underpins India's nuclear doctrine. "Nuclear weapons are not for war-fighting or even threatening anybody. Any talk of them coming into play is totally absurd. We have a very clear self-declared no-first use policy,'' said a source. Pakistan, in contrast, has no such policy. And when President Asif Ali Zardari indicated a willingness to take a turn away from it recently, he was publicly snubbed by the military leadership who call the shots across the border. Unlike India, where the NCA is controlled by the civilian leadership, the finger on the nuclear button in Pakistan is that of its Army chief General Pervez Kayani. For the NCA meeting to have skipped a discussion on the tension building up in wake of Pakistan's belligerent refusal to keep its promise to act against terror groups is improbable. In fact, as reported by TOI on Sunday, the "conventional'' operational preparedness of the armed forces to tackle any eventuality did figure in the meeting. Since then, Pakistan has shown aggressive signs of cranking up its war machinery, even as Indian forces maintain a high state of operational readiness, with armoured columns, warships and fighters ready to swing into action "in the shortest possible time'' if required.

Rajat Pandit, TNN

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Source Times Of India