India has diplomatic relations with 201 states/dependencies around the globe, having 199 missions and posts operating globally while plans to open new missions in 2020–21 hosted by 11 UN Member States.
Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. Proliferation has been opposed by many nations with and without nuclear weapons, as governments fear that more countries with nuclear weapons will increase the possibility of nuclear warfare, de-stabilize international or regional relations, or infringe upon the national sovereignty of nation states.
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial law in 1977. Zia served in office until his death in a plane crash in 1988. He remains the country's longest-serving de facto head of state and Chief of Army Staff.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a Pakistani barrister and politician who served as the fourth President from 1971 to 1973, and later as the ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977. His government drafted the Constitution of Pakistan in 1973, which remains in effect. He was the founder of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and served as its chairman until his execution. His daughter, Benazir Bhutto later led the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and was the 11th and 13th Prime Minister of Pakistan; his grandson, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is the current chairman of the PPP, and is serving as the Foreign Minister of Pakistan.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, NI, HI, FPAS, known as A. Q. Khan, was a Pakistani nuclear physicist and metallurgical engineer who is colloquially known as the "father of Pakistan's atomic weapons program".
Shaukat Aziz is a Pakistani former banker and financier who served as 17th prime minister of Pakistan from 28 August 2004 to 15 November 2007, as well as the finance minister of Pakistan from 6 November 1999 to 15 November 2007. During his childhood he studied at St Patrick's High School, Karachi. Aziz graduated from the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi, and joined the corporate staff of the CitiBank Pakistan in 1969. He served in various countries' governments as CitiBank financier, and became executive vice-president of Citibank in 1999. After accepting a personal request by General Pervez Musharraf, Aziz returned to Pakistan from the United States to assume charge of the Finance Ministry as its finance minister while taking control of the country's economy. In 2004, Aziz was nominated by the Musharraf loyalist government led by Pakistan Muslim League (Q), to the position of prime minister after the resignation of Zafarullah Khan Jamali on 6 June 2004.
Pakistan is one of nine states to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan began development of nuclear weapons in January 1972 under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who delegated the program to the Chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) Munir Ahmad Khan with a commitment to having the device ready by the end of 1976. Since PAEC, which consisted of over twenty laboratories and projects under reactor physicist Munir Ahmad Khan, was falling behind schedule and having considerable difficulty producing fissile material, Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgist working on centrifuge enrichment for Urenco, joined the program at the behest of the Bhutto administration by the end of 1974. As pointed out by Houston Wood, "The most difficult step in building a nuclear weapon is the production of fissile material"; as such, this work in producing fissile material as head of the Kahuta Project was pivotal to Pakistan developing the capability to detonate a nuclear weapon by the end of 1984.
The Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, or KRL for short, is a federally funded, multi-program national research institute and national laboratory site primarily dedicated to uranium enrichment, supercomputing and fluid mechanics. It is managed by the Ministry of Energy for the Government of Pakistan. The laboratory is located in Kahuta, a short distance north-east of Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan.
Iran–Pakistan relations covers the bilateral relations between the adjacent states of Iran and Pakistan. After Pakistan gained its independence in August 1947, Iran was one of the first countries to recognize its sovereign status. Relations between Shi'a-majority Iran and Sunni-majority Pakistan became greatly strained due to sectarian tensions in the 1980s, as Pakistani Shi'a Muslims claimed that they were being discriminated against under the Sunni-biased Islamization program being imposed throughout Pakistan by the military dictatorship government of then-President, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran and Saudi Arabia gradually began to use Pakistan as a battleground for their proxy sectarian conflict, and Pakistan's support for the Deobandi Taliban organization in Afghanistan during the civil wars in the 1990s became a problem for Shi'a Iran, which opposed a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
On 15 August 1947, one day after the independence of Pakistan through the partition of British India, the United States became one of the first nations to establish relations with Pakistan. The relations are a very important factor in the United States government's overall policy in South and Central Asia as well as Eastern Europe.
Iran–North Korea relations are described as being positive by official news agencies of the two countries. Diplomatic relations improved following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the establishment of an Islamic Republic. Iran and North Korea pledge cooperation in educational, scientific, and cultural spheres. Some media reports claim this cooperation extends to nuclear cooperation, though official U.S. government publications and academic studies have disputed this. The United States has been greatly concerned by North Korea's arms deals with Iran, which started during the 1980s with North Korea acting as a third party in arms deals between the Communist bloc and Iran, as well as selling domestically produced weapons to Iran, and North Korea continues selling missiles to Iran. North Korea and Iran are the remaining two members of George W. Bush's "Axis of evil", which has led to many of the concerns regarding Iran–North Korea relations.
Saudi Arabia is not known to have a nuclear weapons program. From an official and public standpoint, Saudi Arabia has been an opponent of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, having signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and is a member of the coalition of countries demanding a Nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. Studies of nuclear proliferation have not identified Saudi Arabia as a country of concern. Nuclear technology company IP3 International was formed in June 2016 to transfer nuclear technology from the United States to Saudi Arabia.
The Soviet Union and Pakistan first established the diplomatic and bilateral relations on 1 May 1948.
Nuclear Secrets, aka Spies, Lies and the Superbomb, is a 2007 BBC Television docudrama series which looks at the race for nuclear supremacy from the Manhattan Project through to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
Japan–Pakistan relations, also called Japanese-Pakistani relations, refers to the bilateral relations between Japan and Pakistan. Japan was among the first nations to recognize Pakistan's sovereignty, doing so three days after the latter's independence on 14 August 1947. Diplomatic relations between the two were officially established in April 1952 following the end of the Allied occupation of Japan. Pakistan played a major role in helping to lift the occupation as well as rebuilding the Japanese economy via mass exports and waiving war reparations owed to the country by Japan. The relationship between the two countries strengthened through the Cold War due to Pakistan's alliance with the U.S.-led Western Bloc, which Japan was a part of. Relations between Japan and Pakistan have generally remained stable, with the exception of the time period in which India and Pakistan were subject to Japanese sanctions due to their nuclear weapons tests in 1998. Relations have once again improved since then, with Pakistan receiving over ¥260 billion in grants and aid from Japan as well as around ¥3 billion in investments. As of 2015, there are around 968-2000 Japanese nationals residing in Pakistan whereas about 12,708 Pakistani nationals are residing in Japan. About 20,000 Japanese tourists visited Pakistan between 2007-2008 and continue to express an interest in doing so, focusing on Pakistan's Buddhist sites. Pakistan is primarily represented through its embassy in Tokyo and Japan is represented through its embassy in Islamabad. As of 2015, bilateral trade between Japan and Pakistan stood at US$1.9 billion.
Project-706, also known as Project-786 was the codename of a research and development program to develop Pakistan's first nuclear weapons. The program was initiated by Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1974 in response to the Indian nuclear tests conducted in May 1974. During the course of this program, Pakistani nuclear scientists and engineers developed the requisite nuclear infrastructure and gained expertise in the extraction, refining, processing and handling of fissile material with the ultimate goal of designing a nuclear device. These objectives were achieved by the early 1980s with the first successful cold test of a Pakistani nuclear device in 1983. The two institutions responsible for the execution of the program were the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the Kahuta Research Laboratories, led by Munir Ahmed Khan and Abdul Qadeer Khan respectively. In 1976 an organization called Special Development Works (SDW) was created within the Pakistan Army, directly under the Chief of the Army Staff (Pakistan) (COAS). This organization worked closely with PAEC and KRL to secretly prepare the nuclear test sites in Baluchistan and other required civil infrastructure.
The Soviet Union–Pakistan relations refers to historical, political, international, and cultural relationships between the state of Pakistan and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Establishing cultural and bilateral connections between Moscow and Karachi on May 1, 1948, the relations were succeed and predate the post-Soviet Russo-Pakistan relations (1991–present).
The Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS or C2NS), (Urdu: ہیئتِ کابینہ برائے امورِ قومی سلامتی) previously known as the Defence Committee of Cabinet, is the principal federal institution and consultative forum used by the people-elected Prime Minister of Pakistan for concerning matters of state's national security, geopolitical, geostrategic, and foreign policy matters with the Prime minister's chief military advisers, senior government advisers and senior Cabinet ministers.
