On Aug. 23, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's special assistant on foreign affairs, Syed Tariq Fatemi, embarked on a four day trip to Belarus and Kazakhstan. As Belarus and Kazakhstan are strongly opposed to nuclear proliferation, Sharif sent Fatemi to the Commonwealth of Independent States region to bolster international support for Pakistan's bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which rival India is also actively seeking to join. The Pakistani government hopes that Islamabad's NSG accession will ease concerns about the potential distribution of Pakistani nuclear weapons to terrorist groups.
Even though China enthusiastically supports Pakistan's NSG bid, Pakistan's partnership with North Korea could derail Sharif's aspirations of joining the nonproliferation organization. Since the 1970s, Pakistan and North Korea have cooperated extensively on the development of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technologies. Pakistan's strong alliance with China and the legacy of a major scandal linking the Pakistani military to North Korea's nuclear program have prevented Islamabad from joining U.N. efforts to diplomatically isolate the North.
While economic links between Pakistan and North Korea were established during the early 1970s, the foundations of the modern Islamabad-Pyongyang security partnership were forged during Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's 1976 visit to North Korea. During his Pyongyang trip, Bhutto struck a delicate balance between U.S. and Chinese policies toward the Korean Peninsula.