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UN
Staff Families In Pakistan, India Evacuated
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Millions of troops are on the alert in the volatile area |
NEW
DELHI, June 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Families of UN staff
in New Delhi are sent home due to simmering tension between India and
Pakistan over Kashmir that world leaders fear could explode into
warfare, a UN official said Saturday.
"There
was a meeting of the UN staff in New Delhi and the decision is to send
the dependents of the international staff to their countries on home
leave," said the director of the UN Information Center in New
Delhi, Feodyor Starcevic, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"It is because of the tension," he added.
"The
plan is to reduce the number of international staff without affecting
any UN work in India and Pakistan. This will be done in the next few
days up to early next week," Starcevic explained.
He
stressed that the action shouldn't be seen as an
"evacuation" and that the UN was merely falling in line with
programs the United States, Britain and other Western countries began
implementing Friday.
Meanwhile, an
Islamabad-based diplomat said, "A decision has been taken in
New York to proceed with the evacuation of the families very quickly.
This decision also applies to families of the staff in India."
The
pullout of several hundred family members will be carried out "in
the next few days", he said, adding that it had yet to be decided
whether the dependents would fly out on commercial flights or on
chartered aircraft.
"This
is obviously linked to the very strong tensions," confirmed a UN
source, adding that the evacuation order was "mandatory".
The
source said the decision came as a "surprise" and was likely
made at UN headquarters overnight, after a flurry of peace missions by
foreign envoys seeking to defuse the brewing crisis.
In
a separately related development, a U.S. defense official said Friday
that between nine million and 12 million people would die in a
"worst-case" nuclear war between India and Pakistan, citing
a classified Pentagon assessment.
That
projection does not take into account subsequent deaths from disease,
famine and contaminated water supplies, only the immediate casualties
of a nuclear conflagration between the South Asian neighbors, the
official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The
classified assessment was updated last week by the Defense
Intelligence Agency amid soaring tensions between India and Pakistan
as they squared off over Kashmir.
In
the worst case scenario, the official said, "the fatalities would
be between nine [million] and 12 million and the injuries between two
[million] and six million" in the short term.
"Long-term,
you would be talking about starvation, pollution of the water tables,
birth defects, and all that other stuff," the official said.
The
scenario took the number of nuclear weapons each side was believed to
have, and matched them to their most likely target list, then assumed
all weapons would be successfully delivered and all would burst on the
ground, sending up clouds of radioactive fallout, the official said.
Because
of the greater fallout, such ground-burst nuclear explosions would
likely produce several million more casualties than if nuclear weapons
were detonated in the air.
An
airburst nuclear explosion produces "more damage on structures
but it doesn't produce the fallout that a surface burst does,"
the official said.
Jane's
Strategic Weapons Systems estimates that India has between 50 and 150
nuclear weapons, and Pakistan between 25 and 50.
The
U.S. defense official said the Indian nuclear weapons were estimated
to be in the low 10-kiloton range while the Pakistanis' were in the
20-kiloton range.
The
atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima at the end of World War II was
approximately 14 kilotons.
The
official said the DIA assessment was based on a "worst-case
scenario" that made some liberal assumptions.
For
instance, it assumed Pakistan would likely deliver its nuclear weapons
with F-16 fighters and that all would get through India's integrated
air defenses, the official said.
Pakistan
also has two nuclear-capable ballistic missiles -- the Shaheen and the
Ghauri, with ranges of 700 kilometers (420 miles) and 1,500 kilometers
(900 miles) respectively.
India,
for its part, was judged most likely to use Soviet-made MiG-27
fighters to deliver its nuclear weapons. It also has nuclear-capable
British-made Jaguar aircraft.
India
has only one nuclear-capable ballistic missile, the Prithvi-I, with a
range of only 150 kilometers (90 miles), the official said. It is
testing a longer range Prithvi-II missile.
For
his part, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he is prepared
to lay out for India and Pakistan the horrific consequences of a
nuclear war when he visits the region next week. 
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