NRRCs and Nuclear Stability in South Asia: Structure, Goals, Functions of the NRRCs

This article was written while I was Research Assistant at the IPCS, New Delhi in 2004. 

The 1999 Lahore Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) envisaged measures that could prevent any nuclear accident, detonation by state or non-state actors from escalating into a situation that could result in a nuclear exchange.

Unfortunately, the Lahore MOU was still-born due to the Kargil conflict and subsequent military coup in Pakistan. The recent CBM talks on 20 June 2004 between India and Pakistan were important because of the fact that they were the first time that the two neighbours were discussing nuclear issues and were attempting to put a framework in place that took into account the changed realities in the post- 1998 tests.

The six-member Pakistani team on nuclear CBMs that visited India in June 2004 was led by Tariq Osman Haider, Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs while the Indian delegation was led by Sheel Kant Sharma, Additional Secretary (International Organisations) in the Ministry of External Affairs. It was decided to set up ‘hotlines’ between the two Foreign Secretaries, with plans also for upgrading and securing the existing ‘hotline’ between the DGMOs are also planned.

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NRRCs and Nuclear Stability in South Asia: History of NRRCs

This article was written while I was Research Assistant at the IPCS, New Delhi in 2004.

Against the recent backdrop of nuclear CBM talks between India and Pakistan, an atmosphere of cautious optimism has been building up. One suggestion that is doing the rounds is that of setting up Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers (NRRCs) in India and Pakistan. This is akin to the NRRCs that exist between Moscow and Washington.

The US concept of the NRRC came form a Congressional working group sponsored by Senators John Warner and Sam Nunn in the mid-eighties. The NRRCs were perceived as tools of lessening US-Soviet nuclear tensions. At the Geneva Summit in November 1985 President Reagan and Secretary General Gorbachev discussed the concept of nuclear risk reduction. After a series of meetings held in 1985 and 1986 in the US and the USSR the proposal to set up NRRCs was further refined. Finally, on 15 September 1987 the NRRC Agreement was signed by the then US Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that formally recognized the US and Soviet NRRCs. The two centers assumed greater importance because they were the first direct communications link between the two capitals in more than twenty years since the Presidential ‘hotline’ was instituted in 1963.

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