North Korea on Monday claimed to have successfully conducted its first nuclear test. It had walked out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 2003 and said as early as February 2005 that it has functional nuclear weapons in its possession.
Now, with the worst fears of the international community coming true, what do you think the development means:
- To India? Will the test jeopardise the already controversial Indo-US nuclear deal?
- To world security, what with North Korea being one of the most isolated countries in the world and also dubbed a rogue state in the 'axis of evil' by US President George W Bush?
- To Pakistan, especially if it is proven that tainted nuclear scientist A Q Khan's nuclear bazaar had indeed proliferated nuclear technology to North Korea?
- Will the tests embolden another State on the verge of nuclear tests, Iran, and bring things to a boil?
- And to the Korean peninsula, where the South has been blackmailed and arm-twisted to keep the North afloat with food, aid and fuel, while that country has gone about splurging millions to make it's army the fourth largest in the world?
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