| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"nkdatta8839" |
| Date: |
06 Feb 2004 08:40:47 PM |
| Object: |
Keeping A Nuke Peddler In Line |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17474-2004Feb5.html
Washington Post
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A22
EDITORIAL
Giving Pakistan a Pass
THE ATTEMPT by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to whitewash his
country's marketing of nuclear weapons technology to rogue
dictatorships and sponsors of terrorism comes as no surprise. The
general and his government have been lying for years about the illegal
traffic. Now that their cover has been blown by evidence supplied to
the United Nations by Libya and Iran, they are attempting to pin all
the blame on a single scientist while stonewalling any international
investigation. On Wednesday Abdul Qadeer Khan, the chief designer of
Pakistan's atomic weapons, confessed on television to selling his work
through an international black market and claimed he acted alone --
contradicting his previous implication of Mr. Musharraf and other top
generals. Yesterday Mr. Musharraf duly pardoned him, called him a hero
and declared that Pakistan would not supply documentation to the
International Atomic Energy Agency or admit its investigators.
Such belligerence could be expected from a military ruler. What's hard
to believe is the Bush administration's reaction to it. Rather than
moving to impose sanctions on Pakistan -- action that might be
expected for a government that has been caught providing the
technology for nuclear weapons to such countries as Iran, Libya and
North Korea -- it has swallowed his coverup and even congratulated him
on it. "We value the commitments Mr. Musharraf has made to prevent the
expertise in Pakistan from reaching other places," State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday. "We think that Pakistan is
taking serious efforts to end the activities of a dangerous network."
As for the pardon of Mr. Khan -- who by Pakistan's account is probably
the worst criminal in the history of nuclear weapons proliferation --
"I don't think it's a matter for the United States to sit in judgment
on," Mr. Boucher said.
President Bush has said since Sept. 11, 2001, that his first mission
as president is to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction
to terrorists and the regimes that sponsor them. His national security
doctrine declares that even preemptive military action is justified in
order to stop it. Yet now that Pakistan's regime has been caught
making such transfers, his administration is seemingly prepared to
accept its implausible alibi, allow the very generals who oversaw the
traffic to investigate it, and trust that they won't do it again.
There's no need for U.S. or U.N. action, suggests Mr. Boucher: "What
penalties, sanctions, controls or steps are used to prevent it from
happening again, those are up for individual governments to decide,"
he said. "It's up to the Pakistani government to make sure that this
sort of thing doesn't happen again." Iran and North Korea, which are
facing U.S. demands for intrusive international inspections and the
threat of a referral to the U.N. Security Council, may take comfort
from those words.
The administration's dilemma is that it has banked its policy toward
Pakistan on its relationship with Mr. Musharraf, who has been showered
with aid and praise in exchange for half-measures against terrorism
and promises about stopping proliferation. Perhaps there is no
alternative to a relationship with the general. But that relationship
cannot be the only defense against further delivery of Pakistan's
nuclear weapons technology to enemies of the United States. Mr. Bush
should insist that Pakistan supply the details of its trafficking to
the IAEA and allow outside monitoring of its programs. Stopping
Pakistan's proliferation is vital to U.S. security. It cannot be left
to Mr. Musharraf to decide how or whether it will be done.
================================================================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14272-2004Feb4.html
Washington Post
Thursday, February 5, 2004; Page A20
EDITORIAL
Pakistan's Nuclear Crimes
WHILE WASHINGTON has been debating the failure to find weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, an extraordinary series of revelations has
confirmed that Pakistan has been guilty of some of the worst crimes of
nuclear weapons proliferation ever committed. For some 15 years it has
been supplying atomic bomb technology to rogue states and sponsors of
terrorism -- and it did so even after President Bush declared that
governments that conducted such transfers could be subject to
preemptive attack by the United States. Under pressure from the United
Nations, Pakistani officials have acknowledged that nuclear designs
and materials were given to Iran, Libya and North Korea, either
directly or through an underground network involving middlemen in
Germany and a secret factory in Malaysia. Officials claim the traffic
was conducted solely by the country's chief weapons scientist, Abdul
Qadeer Khan, and several associates. Hoping to avoid prosecution, Mr.
Khan duly confessed on Pakistani television yesterday and absolved his
government. But the scientist previously gave investigators a more
plausible account: that President Pervez Musharraf and other senior
military leaders approved the deals.
For more than two years the Bush administration has embraced Mr.
Musharraf as a strategic ally and overlooked his suppression of
Pakistani democracy and his coddling of Islamic extremists. Now the
administration must confront the reality that Pakistan's military
leadership has done more to threaten U.S. and global security with
weapons of mass destruction than either al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein.
Were Pakistan not a professed ally of the United States, its behavior
would meet the criteria for preemptive military intervention outlined
in Mr. Bush's national security strategy. He is not contemplating such
action, nor should he be. But the United States must ensure that
Pakistan never again markets its nuclear weapons technology. That will
require more than extracting further promises of good behavior from an
unreliable general.
Mr. Musharraf, who narrowly survived two recent assassination
attempts, has made lots of promises to Washington since Sept. 11,
2001. Most have not been fulfilled. When asked about Pakistan's
commerce with Iran and North Korea, he either denied that it occurred
or implied that he put a stop to it. But Pakistani military cargo
flights to North Korea took place as late as 2002. Last fall the
United States arranged the interception of a Libya-bound shipment of
industrial equipment for nuclear weapons. It turns out the goods were
supplied by the network connected to Mr. Khan.
Mr. Musharraf can be expected to go on denying responsibility for the
illegal trafficking while promising to stop it. His word should not be
enough. The Bush administration and its allies have insisted that
other nations guilty of illegal nuclear weapons activity, including
Iran and Libya, submit to strict international inspections. Pakistan
is not a signatory to international nuclear arms agreements; no
outside authority regulates its nuclear programs. That should change.
If it is to remain a friend of the United States and receive the
billions in aid promised by the Bush administration, Pakistan should
be required to commit itself formally to stop proliferating -- and the
United States or the United Nations should have the means to verify
its compliance.
================================================================================
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040205-082238-2912r.htm
Washington Times
February 6, 2004
Pakistan's Dr. No
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
After three years of denying anything was amiss in Pakistan's
nuclear establishment, President Pervez Musharraf has finally conceded
that a national icon, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan (AQK), the father of
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, is a criminal proliferator of nuclear
secrets.
But Mr. Musharraf is still reluctant to concede that his country's
all-powerful and controversial Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
agency knew about it. Islamabad's behind-the-scenes whispers say Mr.
Musharraf , when he was army chief of staff, then chief executive
before he became president, also was fully in the picture.
AQK, a devout Muslim with a penchant for the lifestyle of the rich
and famous, is under house arrest after admitting he peddled nuclear
know-how to North Korea, Iran and Libya. After Libyan leader Moammar
Gadhafi decided last month to dismantle his embryonic nuclear weapons
program under international inspection, AQK's assistance could no
longer be denied. AQK and his nuclear scientists had given Libya the
wherewithal, originally stolen from the plant where Dr. Khan worked in
the Netherlands in the 1970s, to manufacture the centrifuge technology
needed to refine uranium to weapons-grade quality.
Under questioning by Mr. Musharraf himself, AQK confessed to being
the "enabler" for the secret nuclear weapons programs of both North
Korea and Iran, the remaining two members of president Bush's axis of
evil trio. Iraq was the third. But Pakistan's Dr. No also made it
clear he would go public with everything he knows about the
powers-that-be at a public trial.
AQK's Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) the heart of Pakistan's
nuclear establishment was so secret even civilian prime ministers
were not allowed to visit the installations 20 miles west of
Islamabad. KRL was under the strict control and supervision of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Both the KRL and ISI are
known for their anti-American culture.
In 2001, a U.S. spy-in-the-sky satellite photographed a Pakistani
C-130 at Pyongyang airport in North Korea as it loaded missiles for
Pakistan. These missiles were exchanged for nuclear weapons
technology. ISI was in charge of the entire operation.
AQK's motivations were ideological as well as the lure of lucre.
He had a well-known loathing of the U.S. that dated back to 1989 when
the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and the U.S. began
punishing Pakistan for its secret quest to acquire a nuclear arsenal.
The Bush 41 and Clinton administrations imposed a series of
diplomatic, economic, and military sanctions against Pakistan, which
kept denying it was involved in anything beyond the peaceful uses of
nuclear energy. Until Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests, that is.
AQK was generously compensated for helping America's enemies
achieve nuclear weapons capabilities. He made dozens of trips to North
Korea and to Dubai, where he maintained a mansion, and met with Libyan
and Iranian nuclear scientists. He also conducted similar meetings in
Casablanca, Morocco, and Istanbul, Turkey. Anyone who knows anything
about Pakistan's ultrasecret nuclear activities also knows these
activities could not have taken place without the full knowledge and
approval of ISI.
President Musharraf first suspected something was amiss in March
2001 when he relieved AQK as head of Pakistan's nuclear program and
appointed him as an adviser to the president on nuclear affairs. But
AQK continued his nuclear proliferation activities unimpeded until
last week when he was fired as an adviser to the president and placed
under house arrest.
Two Pakistani nuclear scientists under AQK's orders journeyed to
Kandahar, Afghanistan, shortly before the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, to confer with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban
leader, and Osama bin Laden. Shortly after Operation Enduring Freedom
toppled the Taliban regime, one of Mullah Omar's messages warned of an
event that would soon hit the U.S. "so terrible that it defies
description." Some intelligence analysts relate Omar's statement to
the visit of the two Pakistani scientists before the U.S. attack who
presumably told their interlocutors how to assemble a "dirty bomb," or
a blend of conventional explosives with radioactive materials.
After the liberation of Kabul and Kandahar, the CIA submitted to
Mr. Musharraf a list of a half-dozen nuclear scientists it wanted
probed for al Qaeda links. The two who had visited Kandahar before
September 11, Suleiman Asad and Muhammad Ali Muktar, suddenly were
working in Burma on undisclosed research, and therefore unavailable.
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmud, former director of Pakistan's Atomic
Energy Commission (PAEC), and Chief Engineer Chaudry Abdul Majeed had
also befriended Taliban leaders, according to documents captured in
Kabul.
Shortly before Enduring Freedom got under way Oct. 7, 2001, Mr.
Musharraf dispatched to Kandahar the head of ISI, accompanied by some
of Pakistan's politico-religious leaders, to urge Omar to give up
Osama bin Laden and thus avoid an American attack. The ISI chief
ignored Mr. Musharraf's orders and advised Omar not to surrender bin
Laden. Mr. Musharraf fired him.
Two Pakistani generals former army chief Gen. Aslam Beg and
former ISI chief Gen. Hamid Gul are close to AQK and are believed to
have been aware of his self-appointed mission to proliferate nuclear
weapons knowledge to America's enemies. Gen. Gul once said he looked
forward to the day when a truly Islamic state could be established a
new caliphate comprised of a nuclear arsenal and the oil resources of
Iran and the Gulf after the demise of the Saudi royal family.
Islamist militants also see Iraq as a potential battlefield for a
larger war of civilizations that Gen. Beg told UPI in December 2001
"is already upon us." The overall strategic objective of the
AQK-Beg-Gul school of thinking is humiliation of the U.S., much as
earlier was visited on the Soviets in Afghanistan.
While Mr. Musharraf was in the U.S. last June to reassure
President Bush about his pro-American bona fides, his own chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen. Mohammed Aziz Khan said, at
a public meeting, "America is the No. 1 enemy of the Muslim world and
is conspiring against Muslim nations all over the world." These are
also the sentiments that inspire Pakistan's nuclear proliferation
campaign. "To assume that only Dr. Khan and his No. 2., Muhammad
Farooq, the head of overseas procurement, were involved is patently
absurd," said a U.S. intelligence source who has served in Pakistan.
To avoid what could be a public trial embarrassing the Pakistani
high command, including Mr. Musharraf himself, and ISI, the president
persuaded AQK to fall on his sword. On Wednesday, Mr. Khan made a full
groveling confession on TV about his global proliferating activities
"that I did in good faith" but now realize "I was mistaken."
He absolved the government and military from any culpability. But
this was unlikely to end the AQK saga. Next comes the unraveling of
AQK's international nuclear black market, with operatives including
Americans, Europeans, Arabs and Asians.
================================================================================
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-pakistan28jan28,1,5094922.story
LA Times
January 28, 2004
EDITORIAL
Pakistan and Proliferation
Musharraf ..... denied that any government or military officials were
involved. That is not a believable assertion. For much of Pakistan`s
history since 1947, the military and government have been one and the
same, directly involved in all aspects of the nuclear program.
================================================================================http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-courtnukes28jan28,1,6874767.story
LA Times
January 28, 2004
Pakistan Sheds No Light on Detained Scientists
By Paul Watson
...... it is impossible to do so because of tight security. Any sale to
governments abroad of information crucial to Pakistan`s national
security, they say, could not have been done without the military`s
knowledge and approval.
================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/international/asia/30NUKE.html
NY Times
January 30, 2004
Nuclear Inquiry Skips Pakistani Army
By DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 29 For the past week, senior government
and intelligence officials, speaking anonymously, have steadily
disclosed details of a deepening inquiry into what seems to have been
the transfer of Pakistan's nuclear technology to Iran and other
countries in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
Their version of events expected to be released publicly this
weekend blames the country's nuclear scientists, including Abdul
Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, for selling
technology for personal gain.
But one issue rarely addressed by officials of the military-led
government is the extent to which the inquiry has examined the role
Pakistan's powerful military which had tight control over the
nuclear program may have played in the sale or sharing of nuclear
technology.
In interviews this week, retired Pakistani civilian and military
officials, former American diplomats and proliferation experts said
the country's military-led government appeared to be glossing over
evidence that senior military officials might have approved the sales.
More recent reports of proliferation including allegations that the
governments of the current president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and
former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto shared nuclear technology with
North Korea are also being given short shrift, they said.
The officials and analysts emphasized that they had no proof that the
army was involved, but wondered why Pakistani investigators had not
questioned any senior army officials.
George Perkovich, a proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, in Washington, said General Musharraf, who seized
power in 1999, was trying to appease American demands for an
investigation while not angering the army, his base of support.
"The problem for Musharraf is that people in the army would know about
this," Mr. Perkovich said in a telephone interview. "And he wants to
protect his club."
One focus of suspicion is Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the commander of the
Pakistani Army from 1988 to 1991, American analysts said. Robert B.
Oakley, who served as the American ambassador in Islamabad from 1988
to 1991, said in a telephone interview that General Beg told him in
the spring of 1991 that he was discussing nuclear and conventional
military cooperation with Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
"He said he had a good conversation with the Revolutionary Guards
about nuclear cooperation and conventional military assistance," Mr.
Oakley said. "Iran was going to support Pakistan with conventional
military aid and petroleum and the Pakistanis would provide them with
nuclear technology."
In an interview this week, General Beg denied ever sharing nuclear
technology with Iran. But he did confirm that he proposed that
Pakistan adopt a doctrine of "strategic defiance" involving an
alliance between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.
General Beg said such an alliance would thwart an American invasion of
all three countries that he expected after the United States defeated
Iraq in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. This week, he predicted that
history would prove him right and that an alliance similar to the
European Union would form and the three countries would become "the
core of the Muslim world, to emulate."
Mr. Oakley said he was so concerned by General Beg's statements in
1991 that he went to Pakistan's prime minister at the time, Nawaz
Sharif, and urged him to quash any such arrangement. Mr. Oakley said
that Mr. Sharif agreed to speak to Iran's civilian leaders.
Mr. Sharif, who was toppled by General Musharraf and now lives in
exile in Saudi Arabia, declined a request for an interview this week.
Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, a cabinet minister and senior aide to to Mr.
Sharif, said he remembered that General Beg proposed an alliance with
Iran and Afghanistan. But he said senior civilian officials did not
take General Beg's ideas seriously.
Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who served as the director of Pakistan's military
intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, from 1987 to 1989,
said some officers joked that the country, which at the time was on
the verge of defaulting on loan payments, should sell its nuclear
technology. But he said none of the proposals were taken seriously.
"It was nothing more than loose talk," said General Gul, who is now
retired. "Bizarre talk. Wild ideas."
Asked if he turned a blind eye to nuclear shipments, General Beg said
no reports of proliferation came to him during his tenure.
Lt. Gen. Assad Durrani, who served as director of military
intelligence from 1988 to 1990 and intelligence director from 1990 to
1992, said he received no reports of proliferation. General Durrani,
now retired, said the agency only tracked efforts by foreign
intelligence operatives to penetrate the nuclear program.
He said a separate branch of the nuclear program run by both civilians
and military officials monitored the scientists. Government officials
have said investigators are questioning two retired generals in charge
of nuclear lab security. "The security of Dr. A. Q. Khan was not our
responsibility," he said. "The I.S.I. is not a security-providing
agency."
General Durrani and a close aide to General Musharraf both suggested
that the intelligence service and the army were not the invulnerable,
all-knowing institutions Pakistanis perceived.
"I have seen the workings of the I.S.I. and I have seen the workings
of the military mind-set," said the aide, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity. Military officials probably saw the scientists as
"national heroes" and never suspected them of wrongdoing.
But more recent allegations of proliferation involving North Korea, if
true, are more likely to involve direct army involvement, said Mr.
Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment. American officials believe that
Pakistan traded nuclear technology for ballistic missile technology
with North Korea in the mid-1990's. Pakistani officials vehemently
deny it.
In 1993, Benazir Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, visited
North Korea and was given the plans for a ballistic missile, current
and former Pakistani officials said.
In an e-mail response to written questions this week, Ms. Bhutto, who
lives in exile in London, declined to comment on specific details of
the nuclear program. But she said she consistently opposed the
proliferation of Pakistani nuclear technology while in office.
She said that during her first term, from 1988 to 1990, she tightened
security after concern grew that a foreign country might arrest a
visiting Pakistani scientist to slow the country's clandestine nuclear
program.
"I therefore directed that no scientist should leave the country
without written government permission," she wrote, "and without being
accompanied by a security detail."
There are also questions about General Musharraf's tenure. In July
2002, American satellites tracked a Pakistani plane as it picked up
ballistic missile parts in North Korea, American officials have said.
American intelligence officials also believe that within the last two
years Pakistani centrifuge designs helped Libya's nuclear program.
But none of the accounts prove that the army, or Pakistan's
government, approved the transfer of nuclear technology. American and
Pakistani analysts said the evidence that could prove the military
approved the transfer would be the discovery of Pakistani nuclear
hardware in Libya, North Korea or Iran. They said it was nearly
impossible for hardware to leave Pakistan's tightly guarded nuclear
facilities, and the country, without at least the tacit approval of
the Pakistani Army.
================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/27/international/asia/27STAN.html
NY Times
January 27, 2004
General Denies Letting Secrets of A-Bomb Out of Pakistan
By DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 26 Days after Pakistan's president
acknowledged that scientists from his country had most likely sold
nuclear designs to other nations, the army commander formerly in
overall charge of the program declared Monday that he had never
approved a transfer of atomic information.
"I was never confronted with any such situation," said the retired
general, Mirza Aslam Beg, who was the army commander from 1988 to
1991.
His comments, in an interview, contradicted assertions last week by a
senior Pakistani intelligence official, who said General Beg had
approved the transfer of technology to Iran. The official also said
the scientist who led Pakistan's effort to build an atomic bomb, Abdul
Qadeer Khan, had told investigators that any sharing of nuclear
technology had had General Beg's approval.
Last Friday, after years of denial, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, acknowledged the likelihood that scientists from this
country had sold nuclear designs to other nations for personal
financial gain. He insisted that the government was not involved, and
he strongly suggested that suspects would face punishment.
As head of the army, which tightly controlled the nuclear program,
General Beg was believed to have had the clearest knowledge of what
happened. But while 11 scientists and low-level military staff
officers have been questioned, Pakistani investigators have not spoken
to the general.
He confirmed that he had not been questioned, adding: "They would not
dare. They would not dare."
In a 90-minute interview, the general, at times combative, asserted
that any scientists who sold Pakistan's nuclear technology should not
be punished. He also said Muslim countries should not be asked to give
up the pursuit of nuclear weapons until India and Israel destroyed
their nuclear arsenals.
"Why don't you start from there?" General Beg asked. "This is the
discrimination and duplicity which gives heartburn and humiliation to
the Muslim world."
Asked if he had looked the other way when technology or information
might have been transferred, he replied, "Nothing came to our
knowledge."
General Beg's comments reflect the view in some corners of Pakistan
that the United States maintains a double standard when it comes to
Muslim countries and nuclear weapons. The general said it was natural
for countries to want nuclear weapons to counter nuclear-armed rivals.
He also said it was natural for nuclear scientists to want to profit
from their work.
He expressed deep antipathy toward American foreign policy, saying the
United States was blocking the spread of democracy in the Muslim
world, not aiding it. He described himself as an Islamic nationalist,
not an Islamic fundamentalist, and called criticism of efforts by
Muslim countries to obtain nuclear weapons, as well as his portrayal
in the Western news media, unfair.
"It's the Jewish lobby, a particular lobby, which tries to portray me
that way," he said.
Pakistani government officials said they completely disagreed with
General Beg's views, particularly regarding proliferation of nuclear
weapons. "He's wrong about that," a close aide to General Musharraf
said in an interview on Monday. "This is dangerous technology."
In the last several weeks, General Beg has abruptly emerged as a
pivotal figure again in Pakistan's history.
In 1988, he gained a reputation as a selfless hero, the army chief who
chose to restore democracy instead of seizing power himself after the
death of the country's military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq.
Today, he sits near the center of the inquiry into whether Pakistan's
nuclear secrets were transferred to Libya and Iran in the late 1980's.
Talat Masood, a retired general who headed non-nuclear weapons
production in Pakistan, said that in the late 1980's the country's
"one and only priority was to produce the bomb" as quickly as possible
to counter India, which exploded a nuclear device in 1974.
Since retiring from the army, General Beg has run an organization
called the Foundation for Research on International Environment,
National Development and Security, or Friends. The general writes
analyses of world politics regularly published in Pakistani
newspapers.
While dismissed by liberal Pakistanis as extreme, he has a sizable
following among hard-line nationalists and Islamists.
================================================================================
Reuters
Wednesday, February 4, 2004; 10:42 AM
Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Takes the Rap for Leaks
By Mike Collett-White
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Top Pakistani scientist and national hero Abdul
Qadeer Khan made a dramatic personal apology Wednesday for leaking
atomic secrets, the latest twist in a proliferation scandal stretching
from Libya to North Korea.
In a somber address on state television, Khan, revered at home as the
father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, absolved the government and fellow
scientists of any blame in an apparent bid by all concerned to draw a
line under the damaging affair.
Commentators said his confession smacked of a cover-up, possibly part
of a wider agreement to spare the powerful military unwanted scrutiny
in any trial and allow President Pervez Musharraf to avoid pressure
from Islamists and nationalists.
The United States, which has urged Pakistan to stop illegal
proliferation to what it considers "rogue" states, has publicly backed
Musharraf, who is a key ally in its "war on terror."
"My dear brothers and sisters, I have chosen to appear before you to
offer my deepest regrets and unqualified apologies," Khan said on
state-run Pakistan Television.
"There was never ever any kind of authorization for these activities
by the government. I take full responsibility for my actions and seek
your pardon," the silver-haired 69-year-old added, speaking in
English.
Western diplomats and many Pakistanis believe Khan could not have sold
nuclear secrets and sent technology for enriching uranium abroad
without the knowledge of top military officials.
An open trial of Khan could lead to embarrassing evidence implicating
the army, which Musharraf heads, and make a national martyr of the
scientist. Analysts say Musharraf may have agreed to pardon Khan in
return for his apology.
The appearance by Khan, at the center of an international storm over
Pakistan's role in nuclear proliferation during the 1980s and 1990s,
was greeted with skepticism.
"There is no doubt that it is a cover-up," said Shahid-ur-Rehman, a
Pakistani journalist and nuclear expert.
But he warned that Khan's statement may not end the scandal.
"Has there been any violation of international law and will the
international community accept the appeal of clemency, if the
Pakistani government grants it?" he added.
Khan sought to clear his fellow scientists, who he said acted under
his instructions. Four other scientists have been questioned in the
probe along with two brigadiers responsible for security at the
nuclear facility where he worked.
MORE ENEMIES
Musharraf has already made many enemies in Pakistan for supporting the
U.S.-led "war on terror" and trying to make peace with India. The
general narrowly survived two assassination attempts late last year
blamed on disgruntled Islamic militants.
The Islamic opposition has pounced on the government's treatment of
Khan, saying he was a scapegoat hounded by the authorities because of
pressure from the United States. "I don't think people like A.Q. Khan
should be tried. He is a national hero. He has developed the (nuclear)
program," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the Islamic coalition which
has threatened to call a national strike over the issue.
Pakistan originally denied its nuclear secrets and technology had been
leaked, either officially or by individuals.
But it launched an investigation in November after the U.N.'s
International Atomic Energy Agency provided evidence pointing to
Pakistani involvement in Iran's nuclear program. Similar links have
been found with Libya.
A senior military official told Pakistani journalists on Sunday that
Khan had made a detailed statement confessing to supplying designs,
hardware and materials used to make enriched uranium for atomic bombs
to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Khan is reported to have said he was acting on the indirect
instructions of two former army chiefs, Generals Aslam Beg and
Jehangir Karamat. Beg has denied the charge.
A friend of Khan has also been quoted as saying the scientist told
investigators that Musharraf himself knew about the transfer of
nuclear know-how to North Korea, an allegation the military called
"absurd."
The National Command Authority, which oversees Pakistan's nuclear
arsenal, was meeting Wednesday evening and is expected to take a
decision on whether to pardon him.
================================================================================
[American officials in Washington said they assumed that Dr. Khan and
General Musharraf had struck a deal perhaps an agreement not to put
the scientist on trial, in return for Dr. Khan's announcement that no
government officials had been involved in his two decades of
proliferation]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/international/asia/05STAN.html
NY Times
February 5, 2004
Pakistani A-Bomb Guru Says He, Alone, Let Secrets Out
By DAVID ROHDE
...... [Dr. A.Q.Khan] said he had acted entirely on his own. "There was
never, ever any kind of authorization for these activities from the
government," he said.
The three-minute speech placed Dr. Khan, a national hero for turning
his country into a nuclear power, in the unaccustomed role of
supplicant. It was widely perceived in Pakistan to be a carefully
staged attempt to defuse a potentially grave political crisis for the
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and to prevent Dr. Khan from naming
senior military officials who knew of his activities. .....
...... The White House had little to say about the confession, but
American experts on proliferation of nuclear weapons said their
concern was not whether Dr. Khan was punished but whether the illicit
spread of nuclear technology could be stopped.
For months President Bush's strategy has been to put as much pressure
as possible on the Musharraf government, a crucial ally in the
campaign against terrorism, to close down Mr. Khan's network. The
administration has been careful not to take a public role, for fear of
triggering a backlash in Islamabad, where General Musharraf's
opponents already charge that he is doing Washington's bidding.
But American officials in Washington said they assumed that Dr. Khan
and General Musharraf had struck a deal perhaps an agreement not to
put the scientist on trial, in return for Dr. Khan's announcement that
no government officials had been involved in his two decades of
proliferation.
That contention is one that few American intelligence officials
believe. The Military retained tight control over the nuclear program
and government transport planes were used to trade weapons with North
Korea. But it is a polite fiction that the White House may be willing
to live with if it is the only way to keep a close ally in power while
dismantling the Khan trading network.
"We don't know what kind of deal was struck, and we may not know for a
while," one administration official said. "With Pakistan, sometimes
you never know." .....
...... A senior Pakistani government official and a Pakistani military
official said Wednesday that Dr. Khan's statement and the visit to
General Musharraf seeking a pardon had been carefully negotiated in
meetings on Tuesday. .....
...... Pakistani officials said this week that Dr. Khan had operated
with virtually no government or military oversight. .....
...... Pakistani military experts have said that is virtually
impossible. Pakistan's military intelligence agency, Inter-Services
Intelligence, must have tightly monitored the lab and Dr. Khan, the
experts say, if only to prevent Indian agents from sabotaging the lab
or harming Dr. Khan. .....
================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/international/asia/05CND-STAN.html?hp
NY Times
February 5, 2004
Musharraf Pardons Scientist Who Shared Nuclear Secrets
By DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 5 The president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, granted a full pardon today to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the
founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, who admitted sharing
nuclear technology with other countries in a contrite television
appearance on Wednesday night.
General Musharraf cited Dr. Khan's scientific contribution to the
nation as grounds for the pardon, which had been recommended by his
cabinet.
The president said his government had tried to walk "a fine line" to
satisfy international demands that the scientists involved be held
responsible and domestic demands that Dr. Khan, a revered national
hero, not be humiliated.
General Musharraf repeated previous statements that neither the
government nor the army was aware of Dr. Khan's sharing of the nuclear
technology, which took place over a decade.
Military experts, however, have said it would have been virtually
impossible for Dr. Khan to carry out the scheme without the tacit
approval of Pakistan's army, a powerful force within the country.
When asked by journalists at a news conference today what motivated
the scientists to pass on the technology, President Musharraf replied,
"Money."
It was unclear what would happen to four scientists and low-level
security officials still in government detention who were not granted
a government pardon.
Speaking to journalists after the news conference, General Musharraf
said Dr. Khan would be under close supervision to prevent him from
carrying out any more proliferation, but he added that there would be
no further investigation.
The tone of his comments indicated that he wished to put the scandal
behind him.
In a three-minute nationally televised speech on Wednesday, Dr. Khan
said, "I take full responsibility for my actions and seek your
pardon."
Dr. Khan, for three decades one of the most powerful men in Pakistan,
said he had acted entirely on his own. "There was never, ever any kind
of authorization for these activities from the government," he said.
Pakistani officials say Dr. Khan and intermediaries from Sri Lanka,
Germany and the Netherlands shared nuclear technology with Iran, Libya
and North Korea from 1989 to 2000. Their activities appear to be one
of the most successful efforts to evade international controls on the
spread of nuclear weapons technology.
================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/03/international/asia/03STAN.html
NY Times
February 3, 2004
Pakistanis Question Official Ignorance of Atom Transfers
By DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 2 Opposition parties, political and
military experts and relatives of detained officials on Monday
questioned Pakistan's assertion that the founder of the country's
nuclear program had shared technology with Iran, Libya and North Korea
for more than a decade without the knowledge of his superiors.
"This is a *****-and-bull story," said Dr. Muhammad Shafiq, 39, the son
of Brig. Sajawal Khan, a retired Pakistani army officer accused of
taking part in the scheme. "If you want to believe it, believe it. The
truth is nowhere near this story."
In a background briefing to 20 Pakistani journalists on Sunday night,
a senior Pakistani official said that the scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer
Khan, had confessed to covertly sharing nuclear secrets with Iran,
Libya and North Korea from 1989 to 2000. American officials said parts
of the government's account matched events tracked by American
intelligence and that nuclear aid from Pakistan had flowed to North
Korea in 2002 and to Libya last fall.
The senior Pakistani official said Sunday that former army and
intelligence chiefs had been questioned. Senior army officials were
guilty of "omissions," he said, but did not take part in Dr. Khan's
scheme.
Dr. Khan and his close relatives could not be reached for comment on
Monday. A man who answered the telephone at Dr. Khan's home, now
surrounded by security officials, said the scientist was not present.
Dr. Shafiq, son of the detained brigadier said to have aided Dr. Khan,
said he did not expect Dr. Khan's family to comment until the
government announced whether it would prosecute.
Political and military experts predicted that Pakistan's leader, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, would not risk prosecuting Dr. Khan, until recently
a national hero. A trial could set off a public outcry, and Dr. Khan
could identify army officials who approved of his activities, the
experts said. General Musharraf seized power in 1999, and the
country's army is his core base of support.
A senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity on
Monday confirmed that Dr. Khan had signed a detailed confession
several days ago, but he said no decision had been made on whether to
charge the scientist. He said General Musharraf would make a "policy
statement" to the nation early next week after the end of a series of
Pakistani national holidays .
The senior official declined to give further details about what the
government had said was a sprawling smuggling network that involved
German and Dutch middlemen, chartered planes and covert meetings
between Dr. Khan and Iranian and Libyan scientists. If the government
account is true, Dr. Khan and the middlemen carried out one of the
most complex schemes ever to evade international efforts to control
nuclear weapons.
In a telephone interview on Monday, Zahid Malik, Dr. Khan's official
biographer, said he had not spoken to the scientist for 10 days.
Government officials ordered him on Sunday night to stop publicly
commenting on the case, he said. "I cannot say anything categorical,"
he said when asked about the confession. "I have not met the gentleman
I still have so much regard for."
Those who questioned the government's account said Monday that they
were skeptical that Dr. Khan had acted without the approval of the
country's powerful military leadership. Some suggested that Dr. Khan
had agreed to confess to a version of events that put the army in a
good light in exchange for a promise that the military-dominated
government would not prosecute him.
On Sunday, the government also altered its descriptions of what
motivated those who they said might have exported nuclear technology.
Ten days ago, General Musharraf said "some individuals" had sold
nuclear technology for personal gain. On Sunday, the senior official
did not mention greed as a factor. Instead, he said Dr. Khan had
transferred the technology to divert attention from Pakistan's nuclear
program and to aid other Islamic countries.
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading military analyst, said it would have
been possible for Dr. Khan and his aides to covertly divulge nuclear
designs and the names of nuclear component suppliers with other
countries without the military knowing.
But he said it would have been impossible to move equipment or parts
out of the country's tightly guarded top nuclear facility, the Khan
Research Laboratories, without the army's tacit support. Dr. Khan
served as director of the laboratory, which is named for him, until
2001. "If hardware is moved out of the country, then the army is
directly involved," Mr. Rizvi said.
The senior Pakistani official who briefed Pakistani journalists on
Sunday said that centrifuge machines were shipped from Pakistan to
North Korea and that centrifuge parts from Pakistan were shipped to
Iran.
He said the head of security at the Khan Research Laboratories, Brig.
Muhammad Iqbal Tajwar, took part in the scheme, allowing the nuclear
hardware to be shipped. Relatives of the brigadier could not be
reached for comment.
The account of events given by the senior government official on
Sunday also raised questions about Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the chief of
the Pakistani Army from 1988 to 1991. The senior official said Dr.
Khan had told investigators that General Beg urged him to share
nuclear technology with Iran.
General Beg has acknowledged that in 1991 he proposed that Pakistan
form a military alliance with Iran and Afghanistan to thwart what he
thought was an impending American invasion of all three countries. But
he said he never approved the transfer of nuclear technology.
"I would not be stupid enough to do such a thing," General Beg said in
a telephone interview on Monday. "I know what my responsibility is."
General Beg said the security of the nuclear program had not been his
responsibility. The nuclear laboratories were under the control of the
president and the prime minister at the time, he said.
Some political and military experts accused General Beg of making
false statements. They said the country's army has maintained tight
control over the nuclear program since its inception in 1974. The army
has ruled the country for most of its modern history.
"He is lying," said Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense analyst, referring to
General Beg. "They are trying to protect a lot of names."
The senior government official also told journalists that Dr. Khan
told investigators that a military adviser and close friend of former
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto also urged him to share nuclear
technology with Iran. Both men are dead.
A spokesman for Mrs. Bhutto said that the allegations were false and
that she had opposed the spread of nuclear weapons during her two
terms in office.
The holiday week here made it difficult to determine the nature of
political repercussions, although there was some initial response.
Spokesmen for the country's two main secular opposition political
parties, Mrs. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim
League Nawaz, called for a parliamentary inquiry.
In a telephone interview, a spokesman for a coalition of hard-line
Islamist political parties, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United
Action Front, called for Dr. Khan to be allowed to speak publicly. He
also reiterated the coalition's call for a nationwide strike on Friday
to protest the government's treatment of nuclear scientists.
================================================================================
AQ Khan is just a scapegoat - Pak military`s perfect Qurbani for Eid.
It was never a believable proposition that the Khan Research
Laboratories could have peddled anything without the concurrence of
the military. The KRL was always the military`s baby. Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto wasn`t given the clearance by the military even to
visit the top secret Lab!!
The deal with North Korea was essentially a "missile for bomb" barter.
Why, on earth, would scientists like AQ Khan and Farooq want missiles
in payment for personal aggrandizement?
And how could they have possibly authorized flights by the Pak
military`s
US-supplied C-130 transport planes for bringing home the missiles?
And why would the Pak military use the missiles in marchpasts on
National Days?
==========================================================
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 03, 2004 06:57:11 PM ]
Khan indicts Musharraf, Beg, Karamat
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q.Khan has
implicated the country's military ruler Pervez Musharraf and three of
his predecessor army chiefs in the nuclear transgressions he has been
accused of.
Khan has reportedly told investigators that Musharraf, and his
predecessors Jehangir Karamat, Abdul Waheed Kakkar and Mirza Aslam Beg
were among those who knew and approved of his dealings with North
Korea and Iran.
No "debriefings" can be complete unless all of them were brought in
and questioned together, Khan has told investigators, according to
accounts from Pakistan.
Khan's charge appears to be his counter-gambit against the country's
military establishment, which has sought to pin the proliferation
charge solely on rogue scientists while absolving itself.
Pakistani officials on Sunday told journalists that Khan had signed a
12-page confession but the scientist himself is being held
incommunicado.
Khan's implication of Musharraf revealed through his friends is
also potentially embarrassing for Washington, which on Monday
indicated that it is ready to forgive and forget Pakistan's nuclear
transgressions and place its faith in General Musharraf.
Despite widespread belief in the non-proliferation community that the
entire Pakistani establishment, especially the military, was in
cahoots with Khan's activities, the Bush administration was backing
Islamabad in its post-haste clean up. .....
================================================================================
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gannon30jan30,1,2476861.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
LA Times
January 30, 2004
Explosive Secrets From Pakistan
By Kathy Gannon
The secret is out: The know-how and perhaps even the equipment to make
nuclear weapons has been leaked from Pakistan to countries like Iran
and Libya. The question now is: Who dunnit? Greedy scientists or the
Pakistani military?
Greedy scientists is the explanation being offered by Pakistan's
military rulers. What's more, they say, they weren't aware that such
sales were going on until just a few weeks ago, when Libya and Iran
began spilling the beans. They're shocked.
But that seems a bit of a stretch. After all, the weapons or the
knowledge to make them would sell for billions of dollars, an amount
that would have surely raised eyebrows in Islamabad, where corruption
by politicians, money skimming and Swiss bank accounts are routinely
investigated and published often as a result of leaks by Pakistani
intelligence.
The truth is, the military itself is a more likely culprit in the
sales. The military has ruled Pakistan for most of its history.....
...... The military controls the intelligence agency and its nuclear
weapons program. .....
================================================================================
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1142052,00.html
The Guardian, UK
Friday February 6, 2004
WMD proliferation
EDITORIAL
Nuclear bombshell
...... serious WMD-related failure has come to light, involving a
clandestine proliferation network linking North Korea, Iran, and
Libya, and whose epicentre is Pakistan. Since the 1980s until, in the
case of Libya, as recently as last autumn, the briefly disgraced and
now rapidly pardoned Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, sold or
bartered nuclear weapons-related technology for personal gain in
defiance of law, common sense and morality.
Recognising the fact that Dr Khan did not act alone is important. So,
too, is the fact that the full ramifications of this affair have yet
to be explored. Dr Khan's public confession raises, rather than
settles, a host of questions about the role of Pakistan's military and
civilian leaders and intelligence agencies. Their blanket denials of
knowledge or complicity in his activities cannot be taken at face
value. It may be that old allegations about illicit Pakistani WMD
collaboration with al-Qaida will have to be revisited. It may be that
Iran has obtained, courtesy of Dr Khan, the blueprints of a nuclear
bomb. Facing a storm of criticism yesterday, General Pervez Musharraf
tried to draw a line. But he is sure to fail. The Pakistani leader is
not wholly above suspicion himself in this affair; before taking the
fall in exchange for a pardon, Dr Khan suggested the general and other
senior members of the military knew what was going on, at least in
respect of missile barter deals with North Korea. He now baldly
asserts that what he said earlier was untrue. Which is it?
Rogue states everywhere will watch with interest how Washington reacts
to this scandal. Given the importance it attaches to Pakistan's
assistance in the "war on terror" and its peace process with India,
the US is expected to pull its punches, for a while at least. Others
may not. The UN's nuclear watchdog says the revelations, prompted by
information provided by Iran, are just "the tip of an iceberg". If Gen
Musharraf's claim that Dr Khan's activities were unofficial is to be
believed, then he and his government are open to charges of stupefying
incompetence in safeguarding Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Whatever the
domestic pressures, Gen Musharraf was unwise yesterday to reject out
of hand the possibility of future UN nuclear supervision or an
international investigation. .....
================================================================================
================================================================================
http://www.dailytelegraph.com/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/02/04/dl0401.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/02/04/ixopinion.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=221034
Daily Telegraph, UK
February 4, 2004
Pakistan behaves like a rogue state
There was something shocking about the photographs of a garlanded
Abdul Qadeer Khan after Pakistan had exploded its first nuclear bomb.
The reasons for the test were obvious - arch-rival India had detonated
a similar weapon a couple of weeks before - but fκting such a
devastating device with flowers had a sinister ring. Pakistan was
rejoicing in heightened tension in a region that Bill Clinton was
later to call the most dangerous in the world.
Nearly six years on, that unease appears more than justified. Dr Khan
not only developed Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, but in the process also
passed on the designs and technology for producing enriched uranium to
Iran, North Korea and Libya. The first two are part of George W Bush's
"axis of evil", while the third has recently agreed with America and
Britain to dismantle its programme for developing weapons of mass
destruction. Islamabad, a key ally of the West in the war on terror,
has turned out to be a proliferator on a par with Pyongyang.
These highly embarrassing revelations have shown General Pervaiz
Musharraf in a poor light. First, he attempted to ascribe the nuclear
"leaks" to the greed of Dr Khan and his fellow scientists, acting on
their own. That never rang true; nuclear policy has long been tightly
controlled by the army. Now it is believed that the president will
pardon Dr Khan rather than put him on trial for treason. The garlanded
scientist is such a hero that the army fears the political
consequences of letting the law take its course. Moreover, in the
witness box he might well implicate Gen Musharraf and other officers
in the sale of nuclear technology. The Khan case has again
demonstrated the limits of the president's power. First over guerrilla
infiltration into Kashmir and Afghanistan, now over nuclear
proliferation, he falls well short of what the West would like.
The problem for Washington and its allies, for which they deserve
sympathy, is that a successor to Gen Musharraf, especially of the
Islamist variety, might be a good deal worse. For that reason, the
Bush Administration is likely to accept any pardon of Dr Khan through
gritted teeth, arguing that Pakistani proliferation is a thing of the
past. Washington still needs Gen Musharraf's co-operation in lowering
tension with India and in allowing Afghanistan to hold elections under
its new constitution.
The Democrats hoping to challenge Mr Bush in November are unlikely to
fall in with such realpolitik. They will argue that he is condoning
actions worthy of a rogue state, and thereby sending a disastrous
signal to other would-be proliferators. In that, they will be backed
by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, to which
Iran has admitted it was a recipient of Pakistani nuclear technology.
Mr Bush finds himself caught between particular needs in one theatre
of operations and a strategic determination to halt proliferation. The
contradiction is among the most striking thrown up by the seismic
shock of September 11.
================================================================================
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3459617.stm
BBC News
Wednesday, 4 February, 2004, 17:53 GMT
Analysis: Pakistan's nuclear shame
By Ahmed Rashid
Abdul Qadeer Khan took full responsibility for proliferating nuclear
weapons to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
The nuclear National Command Authority, made up of the country's top
military and civilian leaders, is due to meet shortly and is expected
to order a full pardon for Mr Khan.
His admission of guilt and plea for mercy is an attempt by the army to
put the biggest global scandal on nuclear weapons proliferation behind
them as swiftly as possible.
A trial, even held in camera, may implicate political and military
leaders, which may destabilise President Pervez Musharraf's
government.
Opposition parties have threatened to mount street protests if Mr Khan
goes on trial. Islamic fundamentalist and secular parties denounced
General Musharraf for trying to make him a scapegoat whilst absolving
the army of any responsibility.
However, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Islamic fundamentalist
Jamaat-e-Islami, again insisted that Mr Khan had told him he had never
signed a confession during their meeting on Tuesday.
"I don't think people like Khan should be tried. He is a national
hero. He has developed the nuclear programme," Mr Ahmed said.
Choreography?
The meeting between General Musharraf and Mr Khan - and the
scientist's appearance on television - appeared to be carefully
choreographed by the government.
Mr Musharraf, dressed in his camouflage military uniform, looked grim
throughout the meeting and spoke through pursed lips. Mr Khan, dressed
in a tan Kashmir wool jacket, appeared to be bending towards him in
supplication.
Wednesday's events also seem to have been closely co-ordinated with
Washington, which is deeply anxious not to destabilise Mr Musharraf,
who has sided with the US in the war against terrorism.
"President Musharraf has assured us that Pakistan was not involved in
any kind of proliferation and I am talking about the government of
Pakistan," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
The international community still needs Pakistan's close co-operation
in curbing the resurgent Taleban in Afghanistan and catching Osama Bin
Laden and the remnants of al-Qaeda who are hiding out in the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
Kashmir pressure
The US and Britain have also expended much diplomatic capital in
persuading India and Pakistan to begin peace talks on Kashmir.
The first formal meeting between the two countries is due to start on
16 February.
Undue international pressure on Mr Musharraf or domestic agitation
could jeopardise that meeting.
However Pakistani nuclear experts said that in exchange for not
embarrassing Mr Musharraf, the US is now likely to insist that
Pakistan allow some degree of international safeguards on its nuclear
programme.
The US is also likely to ask for greater controls on Pakistan's
stockpile of nuclear weapons and vetting of the 6,000 scientists who
work for the nuclear programme.
Many of Pakistan's nuclear scientists are committed Islamic
fundamentalists.
Such negotiations are likely to be carried in secret.
However, the fall-out of Pakistan's proliferation is likely to
continue, with even greater international scrutiny on the nuclear
programmes of North Korea and Iran, and the arrest of those middlemen
in Europe, Africa and Dubai whom Khan has named. They allegedly helped
him ship nuclear technology to these countries.
================================================================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47-2004Jan30.html
The Washington Post
Sunday, February 1, 2004; Page B04
The Nuclear Noose Around Pakistan's Neck
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
hoodbhoy@isb.pol.com.pk
Thirty years ago, fearful of India's newly acquired nuclear weapons,
Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state.
Lacking a strong technological base, it secretly searched the world's
industrialized countries for what was needed. Few could have imagined
then that the move from buyer to seller of the world's deadliest
technology would be so swift.
But spectacular revelations beginning late last year by Iran, and
later Libya, have forced Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf,
to launch an investigation of Pakistani involvement in secret
transfers of vital nuclear weapons information and equipment to Iran,
North Korea and Libya. Musharraf has conceded the existence of "an
underworld of people" in Pakistan who, out of "personal greed," could
have sold nuclear secrets.
The figure at the center of the crisis is Dr. A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's
most celebrated bomb maker and a national hero, who was fired on
Saturday from his job as science adviser to Pakistan's prime minister.
In his heyday, Khan was accustomed to adulation and worship. His
procurement, by whatever means, of secret centrifuge designs from a
Dutch consortium in the mid-1970s was critical to Pakistan's
successful nuclearization. With unlimited government resources at his
disposal, and free of auditing restrictions, Khan, a metallurgist who
is often wrongly referred to as a nuclear scientist, managed to
purchase restricted items, which companies in Europe and the United
States were willing to sell for the right price, no questions asked.
In the process, Khan became a wealthy man.
Today, he and several close associates find that the laws of powerful
nations cannot be spurned as easily as those of the state they have
claimed to defend. Forced by the international community (read: the
United States), Pakistan has put Khan and his cohorts on notice.
Inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed centrifuges and traces of highly
enriched uranium, and Iran pinpointed Pakistan as the source. A
British expert who recently accompanied agency inspectors into Iran
identified Iranian centrifuges as being identical to the Dutch design
that Khan secretly obtained.
And yet it is unlikely that Khan will be convicted in a Pakistani
court, because that would involve a head-on collision with the
country's religious parties and with a public that has been led to
believe that Khan's development of the bomb guaranteed Pakistan's
security.
While the IAEA and U.S. intelligence may claim credit for having
discovered the fountain of nuclear proliferation, Khan widely and
openly advertised his wares over the past decade. Every year --
including 2003, when the proliferation controversy was already hot --
Islamabad was festooned with colorful banners advertising
international workshops on "Vibrations In Rapidly Rotating Machinery"
and "Advanced Materials," sponsored by the Dr. A.Q. Khan Research
Laboratories (also known as the Kahuta Laboratories), Pakistan's key
uranium enrichment facility.
Over the years, Khan and his collaborators also published a number of
papers on issues regarding the technical means for enabling centrifuge
rotors to spin at supersonic speeds without disintegrating, which is
essential for making bomb-grade uranium. They could scarcely have been
more blatant. But to make absolutely certain, Kahuta issued glossy
brochures that were aimed at classified organizations but were easily
obtained on the Kahuta Web site.
But Khan's nuclear bravado was of little concern to any of Pakistan's
governments, civil or military. Indeed, since May 1998, when the
country conducted several underground nuclear tests, Pakistan has
flaunted its nuclear status in a manner wholly different from the
world's other nuclear-armed countries. Nuclear nationalism was the
order of the day as governments vigorously promoted the bomb as the
symbol of Pakistan's high scientific achievement, national
determination and self-respect, and as the harbinger of a new Muslim
era. Publicly funded nuclear shrines still litter the country. One, a
fiberglass model of the nuclear-blasted Chaghai mountain, stands at
the entrance to Islamabad, bathed at night in a garish, orange light.
Pakistan's political parties, secular and Islamic, rushed to claim
ownership after the nuclear tests; elites and the masses all saw in
the bomb a sign that Pakistan could succeed at something. With great
pomp and ceremony, the bomb makers were turned into national heroes.
With international outrage over its proliferation growing, the bomb
threatens to become a noose around Pakistan's neck. For Musharraf's
government, Khan's mega-ton ego and his escapades over the past decade
and a half are now a nightmare. Even as the Iranian revelation
catapulted Pakistan to the forefront of the world's attention, Khan
threw down the gauntlet last month by declaring in a television
interview: "Who made the atom bomb? I made it. Who made the missiles?
I made them for you." Responding to calls by the Islamic parties to
defend the bomb makers, thousands have taken to the streets of
Pakistani cities in the past week to protest investigations into the
activities of Khan and others. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of
Jamaat-e-Islami, has called for Khan's exoneration even if he "has
made millions of dollars, because he has saved Pakistan."
The investigation is likely to raise more issues than it settles.
While Musharraf has said that "There is no such evidence that any
government personality or military personality was involved," this
attempt to ascribe all wrongdoing to a few greedy individual
scientists will find few takers. Nor should it.
Since its inception, Pakistan's nuclear program has been squarely
under army supervision. A multi-tiered security system was headed by a
lieutenant general (now, two) with all nuclear installations and
personnel kept under the tightest possible surveillance. Diplomatic
immunity was insufficient to prevent a physical roughing up of the
French ambassador to Pakistan some years ago when he journeyed to a
point several miles from the enrichment facility. Kahuta was
considered sensitive to the point that Benazir Bhutto, the former
prime minister, claims that even while in office she could not receive
clearance to visit the labs. In such an extreme security environment,
it would be amazing to miss the travel abroad of senior scientists,
engineers and administrators, their meetings with foreign nationals,
and the transport and transfer of classified technical documents and
components, if not whole centrifuges.
While individual gain may have been part of the motivation, the
substantial cause lies elsewhere. From the inception of the bomb
program, Pakistan's establishment has sought to turn its nuclear
ambitions and success into larger gains. For one, it wanted (and
gained) the support of hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over
by claiming to provide a Muslim success story. (That this involved
replicating a 60-year-old technology for mass destruction is a sad
commentary on the state of the Muslim world.) For another, it enabled
Pakistan to enjoy considerable financial and political benefits from
oil-rich Arab countries. Among others, Libya reportedly bankrolled
Pakistan and may even have supplied raw uranium. After Pakistan's
nuclear tests six years ago, the Saudi government gave an unannounced
gift of $4 billion worth of oil spread over five years to tide
Pakistan over during its difficulties caused by international
sanctions.
The transfers to North Korea are more prosaic. Having developed the
bomb, Pakistan needed missiles to deliver them. North Korea was
willing to supply them, for a price. Like the Dutch centrifuges, all
Kahuta had to do was put them together and stick a star and crescent
on them.
These deals and transfers of technology apparently took place from
about 1987 until 1995. Musharraf is reported to have given Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell his "four hundred percent assurance" that no
such interchange is taking place now. This may be enough for now,
given Musharraf's solid support for U.S. moves against al Qaeda.
Whether moved by money or faith, Pakistan's bomb makers, like the bomb
itself, have seriously compromised the country's international
standing and security. Two years ago, it was scientists from the
Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission who, in a fit of Islamic solidarity,
went to Afghanistan and met with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. It
is hard to believe they were the only ones so inclined.
Pakistan will have to put its nuclear house in order. Anything less
than strict and complete accountability, regardless of rank or
reputation, will leave the door open for those who may wish to try
their luck, or in whom the fire of faith burns brighter. My country's
loose nukes underscore a global danger that may already be out of
control.
Nuclear secrets will keep leaking as long as the bomb has value as a
currency of power and prestige. Humanity's best chance of survival
lies in creating taboos against nuclear weapons, much as those that
already exist for chemical and biological weapons, and to work rapidly
toward their global elimination. To do away with the bomb, bomb
technology and the menace of their proliferation will require the
United States, as the world's only superpower, to take the lead by
reducing its own nuclear arsenal, as well as dealing with all
proliferators, including its ally Israel, at the same level.
================================================================================
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040129-082817-6075r.htm
The Washington Times
January 30, 2004
Pakistan's unraveling nuclear secrets
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Over the past two years, Pakistan's culture of denial had produced
a surreal nuclear theater of the absurd. Any suggestion Pakistan's
nuclear establishment was less than a paragon of nonproliferation
probity was deemed beyond contempt. The father of the country's
nuclear arsenal, Abdul Qadeer Khan (AQK), had been elevated to the
Islamic equivalent of sainthood.
After the Prophet and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the
Pakistani state 55 years ago, AQK was a nonpareil. AQK and his team of
nuclear scientists are devout Muslim fundamentalists. But this, in
turn, led AQK to pursue a hidden agenda. Even though a Sunni, AQK was
nonetheless awed by the politico-religious revolution in Iran in 1979.
The late President Zia ul-Haq who ruled Pakistan as a military
dictator for 11 years (1977-88), also wanted his country to live under
strict Islamic law (Sharia) and gave orders AQK and his team of
scientists and engineers at the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) were
to be given top priority for anything they required.
In early 2001, U.S. intelligence began suspecting AQK and
President Pervez Musharraf were not on the same page. In March that
same year, Mr. Musharraf relieved AQK and his top scientist of direct
control of the nuclear facilities. They were made nuclear advisers to
the office of the president. But the nuclear horse had long bolted the
Pakistani barn, surreptitiously crossing the Iranian border in 1988 to
help the ayatollah's theocracy develop another Islamic bomb.
For the past two years, Mr. Musharraf suspected AQK was
free-lancing his nuclear assets, but the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) agency kept assuring him nothing was amiss. That was hardly
surprising. ISI and AQK have worked hand in glove since the very
beginning of Pakistan's secret nuclear weapons program.
The Libyan dictator's decision to take the secret wraps off his
own nuclear weapons program and dismantle it under international
inspection was a boon to IAEA's nuclear inspectors. Suddenly, Col.
Moammar Gadhafi, suitably impressed by U.S. military capabilities in
Iraq, had no compunction about leaking secrets that led to a Pakistani
and Iranian connection. Libya over the years had given Pakistan about
$100 million for know-how and international nuclear black market
connections on centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons grade
quality. The technology, according to IAEA, was the same in Libya and
Iran, which in turn had obtained it from AQK and his team. AQK had
stolen the entire plan for a centrifuge facility where he had worked
in the Netherlands.
Pakistan's transfer of nuclear secrets to North Korea did not come
under the rubric of an Islamist bomb. It was a straight exchange for
the Korean missiles Pakistan needed as delivery vehicles for its
nuclear weapons.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Mr. Musharraf conceded what
he had long denied. Pakistan's top nuclear scientists had provided
nuclear assistance to Iran's nuclear ambitions. The reaction in
Pakistan was predictable. "Busharraf," as his legions of Pakistani
detractors and enemies mock him, had buckled yet again under U.S.
pressure.
Pakistan's secrets were unraveling like a knitting ball of wool
that falls to the floor. A former army chief of staff, Gen. Aslam Beg,
and a former ISI chief, Gen. Hamid Gul, are fundamentalists who have
backed AQK's nuclear grand design.
Mr. Musharraf's inclination is to pick up the ball and rewind the
wool. Trials for treason of AQK or any of his top nuclear scientists
would not only trigger a nationwide upheaval by MMA, a coalition of
six politico-military parties that now govern two of Pakistan's four
provinces, but dangerous splits in ISI and the all-powerful military
establishment.
Mr. Musharraf had trouble making himself heard in parliament last
month when MMA and other parties jeered him throughout his 40-minute
plea to moderates "to wage jihad against extremism." He warned
lawmakers against an "intolerant society" that is giving Pakistan "a
negative image." His blunt language was music only to American and
Indian ears.
The army engineered the ouster of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister
in 1990 because she tried to get a handle on Pakistan's nuclear
program. Since Mr. Musharraf took over in October 1999, much
clandestine nuclear activity by the country's Islamist scientists and
engineers has been carried out by giving the president plausible
deniability.
He did not know, for instance, prior to the ouster of the Taliban
by U.S. forces in October 2001, that two nuclear experts had traveled
to Kandahar to confer with Mullah Omar, the Taliban chief, and Osama
bin Laden. When the story leaked, the government quickly explained
they were in Afghanistan to offer expertise for an agricultural
project. And when journalists tried to interview them, they were
suddenly on temporary duty in Burma and therefore beyond anyone's
reach. The scuttlebutt in Islamabad is they went to Kandahar to teach
al Qaeda how to engineer "a dirty radiation bomb," conventional
explosives wrapped around fissionable material.
Even though Pakistani authorities detained a dozen nuclear experts
for extensive "debriefings," the temptation for time-tested, but not
time-proven, denials resurfaced at week's end. The blame was now
assigned to an international black market in nuclear bomb-making
technology and one or two Pakistani experts let filthy lucre get the
better of them. Muhammad Farooq, AQK's top assistant in charge of
foreign procurement, was assigned the fall guy role. But Mr. Farooq
wasn't prepared to do the honors. He, in turn, fingered AQK and the
country gasped.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nukes, is worshipped
by most Pakistanis, but Mr. Musharraf has now begun chipping at the
pedestal. The Pakistani president has survived six assassination plots
and two recent attempts on his life within 11 days. He has now
authorized leaks about AQK's nuclear free-lancing in Iran and Libya.
The leaks even suggested the saintly figure of AQK had filled his own
pockets, too. Whether Mr. Musharraf is fearless or foolhardy remains
to be determined.
================================================================================
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/575nerhn.asp
The Weekly Standard
01/08/2004
Pakistan's Nuclear Metastasis: How Widespread is the Cancer?
by Mansoor Ijaz
[The time has come to find out how much damage Pakistan's nuclear
program has done--and how many rogue countries are closing in on the
bomb]
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/575nerhn.asp
The Weekly Standard
01/08/2004
Pakistan's Nuclear Metastasis: How Widespread is the Cancer?
by Mansoor Ijaz
INDIA'S PRIME MINISTER, Atal Behari Vajpayee, met Pakistan's
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in Islamabad on Monday on the
sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
summit. The two erstwhile enemies shook hands and then agreed to hold
formal talks starting next month. The bilateral effort will be aimed
at finally settling a dispute that has long ranked as one of the
world's most dangerous nuclear flashpoints--Kashmir.
But the much-anticipated meeting took place at an awkward moment for
Pakistan, one that could define its future as a nation in moral,
diplomatic, and economic terms more starkly than any other issue. The
conduct of the Pakistani state, ruled for over half its existence by
military governments, is under a microscope as nuclear watchdogs try
to unravel the extent of damage done by Pakistani nuclear scientists
assisting rogue regimes from Tripoli to Tehran to Pyongyang in
building sophisticated uranium enrichment facilities.
Questions raised by Pakistan's nuclear conduct relegate the future of
Kashmir to the sidelines. The burning question is whether Pakistan has
morphed into a rogue nuclear state, or is the unwitting victim of a
handful of deranged army generals, intelligence officers, and mad
nuclear scientists run amok.
RECENT REVELATIONS about the extent to which Islamabad proliferated
its nuclear technology during the past two decades paint a deeply
troubling picture of not just what was happening without detection of
international nuclear monitors, but what may still be going on--and
what must now be stopped if the civilized world is to prevent
tyrannical regimes from developing the capacity to build and deliver
nuclear weapons into the hands of terrorists.
The Bush and Blair successes in coercing Libya and Iran, and perhaps
soon North Korea, into nuclear compliance may signal near-term
progress in counter-proliferation efforts. But these victories have
come at the price of negligently looking the other way while Islamabad
continued an aggressive program to spread its nuclear expertise to
Muslim countries.
With Pakistan's nuclear genie out of the bottle, Bush administration
officials need to focus on getting Musharraf to quickly identify the
extent of the metastasis, to fully disclose it, and to prosecute those
officials involved no matter who they are or how high they are in the
system. Musharraf must then agree to put verifiable measures in place
to insure there is no possibility Pakistani nuclear technology will
show up next in Jakarta, Riyadh, Cairo, or Beirut.
Chronicling the Evidence
The evidence of Pakistan's complicity in spreading its nuclear
know-how is increasingly undeniable. Saif al-Islam Ghaddafi, son of
Libyan strongman Muammar Ghaddafi, almost gleefully admitted to
London's Sunday Times this weekend that Tripoli had paid $40 million
(western intelligence believes the number could be as high as $100
million) to middlemen for a "full bomb dossier" from Pakistan
detailing how to build an atomic weapon. Libya's candor comes as part
of its deal with the United States and Britain to abandon its quest
for nuclear weapons in return for readmission to the community of
nations, and western promises to help rebuild its decrepit oil
industry. Intercepting a German-registered ship in October with
thousands of parts for uranium centrifuges also helped bring the
Libyan leader to his senses about his ongoing nuclear cooperation with
Pakistan.
To add to Islamabad's woes, the New York Times this Sunday posted on
its website a sales brochure for nuclear components available to
qualified buyers from Pakistan's top-secret A.Q. Khan Research
Laboratories (named for the so-called father of Pakistan's nuclear
weapons program). The technologies offered were critical for building
high quality uranium enrichment facilities, and the glossy brochure
presented Pakistan's best nuclear wares with Madison Avenue pizzazz.
The same lab stands accused of providing gas centrifuges to Iranian
scientists through a vast network of secret procurement channels,
largely run through the Middle East port of Dubai. Those centrifuges,
when tested by International Atomic Energy Agency scientists visiting
Iran's key nuclear installations last summer, were found to have
traces of bomb-grade enriched uranium identical to that known to have
originated from Pakistani centrifuges. The findings made it all but
impossible for the parts to have come from anywhere else.
Unfortunately, the plethora of revelations about Pakistan's activities
is only the tip of the iceberg of a decade-long clandestine effort by
unregulated elements within the country's nuclear, intelligence and
military establishments to sell the "Islamic bomb" to other Muslim
nations. At the heart of the effort was a dangerously motivated clique
of former Pakistani intelligence chiefs, corrupt politicians, and
Islamized Pakistani scientists, including Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who
believed it was their moral duty to offer weapons of mass destruction
to embattled Muslim states in the global Ummah (community of Islamic
nations).
Their activities, in various stages of planning and implementation
since the late 1980s, reached a
zenith in the months leading up to the September 11 attacks. Key
military and intelligence officials in Islamabad, later fired or
laterally moved to less sensitive posts by Musharraf at Washington's
urging, had come to the conclusion that the West, led by the United
States, was hell-bent on the economic destruction of Pakistan for its
robust nuclear weapons program, lack of democracy, military support
for militants in Kashmir, and supply lines to the extremist Taliban
regime in Afghanistan.
These ambitious Islamists (wrongly) perceived that spreading
Pakistan's nuclear wealth throughout the Ummah would secure both its
economic future and place in history as the hub of the Muslim world's
intellectual and scientific power. Their vision had multiple
dimensions, including the sharing of knowledge, materials, and
technologies to build ultra-sophisticated research facilities in other
countries, and that is precisely what they repeatedly and aggressively
did for over 15 years.
Spreading the Cancer to other Muslim Countries
The evidence is now compelling that they succeeded in Iran and North
Korea, and were far enough along in Libya to show their fingerprints.
But where else was Pakistan's nuclear brain trust plying its trade and
for what purpose?
Nuclear cooperation with Iran was initially intended during the Cold
War to provide strategic depth in military planning against
arch-nemesis and former Soviet ally, India (now a key ally of both
Iran and Afghanistan). But the strategy evolved early on into a
derivative assistance plan that would enable Iranian-backed Hezbollah
guerrillas based in Lebanon to eventually obtain tactical nuclear
weapons from Tehran--weapons that could be deployed in the Bekaa
Valley once Iran's nuclear fuel cycles had been established. Israel's
reaction time to launch strikes or counterstrikes would drop to zero.
Pakistan would maintain plausible deniability of any involvement in
Middle East affairs (no one would believe Shia Iran was depending on
Sunni Pakistan for nuclear assistance), but its proxy play to
clandestinely help equalize the playing field with nuclear Israel
would give it deep respect, and lots of free oil, from the Arab world.
Saudi Arabia toyed with the idea of obtaining Pakistani nuclear
weapons as well. But Islamabad's intelligence mavens vetoed the effort
because of the heavy American military presence at that time, fearing
their larger designs to spread Pakistani expertise and technology
might get exposed. The alternative put up for consideration was
building a secret facility in one of the sheikdoms bordering Saudi
Arabia--as long as the money, or enough free oil, was there for
Pakistan's benefit, and the sheikdom agreed to provide regional cover
in the event of any Israeli, or even Iranian, malfeasance.
To this day, the March 1999 visit by Saudi Arabia's Defense Minister,
Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, to Pakistan's nuclear facilities at Kahuta
remains unexplained. It is the only non-Pakistani entry ever allowed
inside the top-secret installation. Similarly unexplained are the
"retirement" activities of Dr. A. Q. Khan, now living in Dubai where
the Iranian and Libyan technology transfers allegedly changed hands.
He's ostensibly building schools for disaffected Muslim youth there,
but one wonders what else is being built underneath those desert
sands. The magnitude of Khan's hypocrisy in using the Muslim world's
forlorn as props to camouflage his unholy war to spread nuclear
weapons into the hands of the very regimes that suppressed their
people into oblivion is incomprehensible.
Even Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamed was considered a hero of sorts in
extremist Pakistani circles, having built a modern society with a
vibrant open-market economy while never compromising the Islam phobias
(anti-Semitism, etc.) that made him anathema to Western leaders in his
waning years. It appears Mahathir never accepted the open invitation
to join the Muslim nuclear club, but Malaysia played the game at the
fringes. Components of Libya's nascent uranium enrichment facilities,
for example, were manufactured in Malaysia as recently as 2001.
Leading the Drive for Transparency in Pakistan's Nuclear Affairs
What to do? Simply interrogating a handful of senior nuclear
scientists resident at Kahuta Labs cannot stop the quest by
ungovernable elements in Pakistan's military-intelligence
establishment from spreading the country's nuclear know-how. Even
questioning Dr. A. Q. Khan himself, as Musharraf recently allowed
under intense international pressure, will not be enough.
Disinformation that insured the success of Khan's clandestine effort
to build Pakistan's bomb, after all, was the hallmark of his entire
tenure as Islamabad's nuclear chief.
Nor will it be sufficient that another Muslim country "outs"
Pakistan's nuclear complicity when faced with irrefutable evidence, as
Iran and Libya have apparently done. Waiting for admissions of guilt
in matters of nuclear commerce after the fact is a dangerous policy
for preventing proliferation in unstable, autocratic regimes that
dominate the Muslim world's political landscape.
The conscientious objectors in Pakistan's scientific, military, and
intelligence establishments have a moral responsibility to come clean
about what has been done, wittingly or not, to assist other nations in
developing to whatever extent they could meaningful nuclear weapons
research programs. Sooner or later, the evidence will emerge. But the
world cannot wait until that evidence is a rogue state's North
Korean-made missile armed with a Chinese-made nuclear device assembled
in Islamabad's nuclear labs whose fuel came from gas centrifuges sold
by Pakistan's rogue Islamists.
Musharraf has to publicly and verifiably put an end to the speculation
that Pakistan's nuclear assets are for sale to nations rich enough to
buy from or barter with his scientists. This means, among other
things, taking steps to offer more transparency in independently
monitoring Pakistan's nuclear sites, and keeping track of the
movements of Pakistan's scientists in ways that neither humiliate the
country nor compromise its sovereignty.
As a first step, President George W. Bush needs to ascertain that
Musharraf had no knowledge of the transactions in question. Bush White
House officials have indicated that at least in the Libyan case, where
the transfers of technology took place largely after the September 11
terrorist attacks, Musharraf appears to have had no knowledge of the
transfers. If he genuinely did not, President Bush needs to help
distance the Pakistani president in the minds of the American public
from the crazies who want to destroy Pakistan by sharing its nuclear
secrets with rogue states.
By building such a political argument at home, Bush can take important
legislative steps that will free up technology to assist Musharraf in
holding his scientists and military-intelligence complex accountable
for future actions. The previous U.S. policy of economic and military
sanctions is outdated and irrelevant in the context of Pakistan's
cooperation on post 9/11 terrorism issues.
Since 1990, U.S. sanctions have blocked technologies from being sent
to Pakistan that could improve nuclear security there. These
sanctions, along with U.S. export license controls and, where needed,
global non-proliferation regime compliance rules, should be waived to
insure Islamabad gets the needed technology to protect its nuclear
labs, weapons and materials from unauthorized use.
Pakistan: Model Nuclear Citizen or Loose Atomic Cannon?
There is another reason for pursuing this course. Having come
dangerously close to falling under the U.S. definition of a "rogue"
state, Pakistan could now become a beacon for how to responsibly deal
with rogue elements inside the state without compromising its
sovereignty or dealing a blow to an important cornerstone of the
national psyche. Other states (Georgia, for example) with nuclear
weapons programs that may also be in the market for selling their
secrets might take notice and change course.
To emphasize U.S. concerns, the president (and Congress) should
condition all U.S. aid to Pakistan on Islamabad's acceptance of
nuclear safekeeping vaults, sensors, alarms, closed-circuit cameras,
and other technologies that give Musharraf and his like-minded aides
the ability to internally monitor and track Pakistan's nuclear
technologies. Simply excusing leakage as the work of "greedy"
individuals with their own agendas, as Pakistan's foreign ministry
spokesman did when the Iranian revelations were made, is neither
believable nor an acceptable risk to the safety and security of
civilized nations.
Furthermore, a new formula for giving U.S. aid should be devised that
is inversely proportional to Pakistan's spending on military and
nuclear budgets. The less Islamabad spends of its national wealth on
building nuclear bombs that protect no one, the more America should
spend on helping Pakistan build schools and hospitals that educate and
protect the masses.
Pakistan has the right to maintain its nuclear arsenal for deterrence
against regional threats, and perhaps as importantly, for its national
dignity. It does not have the right, whether sanctioned officially or
not, to assist in the creation of nuclear monsters that seek
Armageddon itself. Nor does it have the right to misappropriate
American taxpayer dollars in support of actions by the very elements
that seek our death and destruction on their misguided path to
eternity.
================================================================================
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/henderson200401190957.asp
National Review
January 19, 2004
The Iran-Pakistan nuclear story continues to unfold.
By Simon Henderson
[..... whatever Musharraf might have known about Iran for years, first
as a senior general, and then as chief of army staff (the Pakistani
army is guardian of the country's nuclear project), he is now claiming
total ignorance and innocence as head of state. .....
...... But to believe the storyline dictated so far by the Musharraf
regime, you have to believe that a group of scientists, motivated by
national glory (the quest for a bomb), was distracted by the
opportunity to earn a quick buck (selling secrets to Iran, a potential
enemy). The whole escapade apparently completely escaped the notice of
a wide array of governments, some military, some democratic.
None of this makes any sense, yet. But with the keywords "Iran,"
"Islamic terrorism," and "nuclear proliferation," this should be one
of the stories to watch in 2004. .....]
================================================================================
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/henderson200401190957.asp
National Review
January 19, 2004
The Iran-Pakistan nuclear story continues to unfold.
By Simon Henderson
"My father told me that if ever anything happened to him, I was to
call you," said the plaintive, attention-grabbing voice of a young
Pakistani woman on the telephone to me Sunday. Her father, a nuclear
scientist, had been detained by Pakistan's feared Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI). They had come in the evening and told her father
to pack a small bag, with personal articles sufficient for a few days.
Barely able to hold back the tears, she passed me onto her brother.
"There had been five or six standing by the door and another three or
so in a four-wheel-drive vehicle and another car outside," he told me.
At least four men have been arrested in the last few days, bringing my
tally to a total of at least seven scientists arrested since the
beginning of December. (One person over the weekend told me between 25
and 30 scientists and other experts might have been detained so far.)
The Pakistani authorities have publicly acknowledged only a few of the
detentions, saying they are trying to work out whether "renegade
nuclear experts" have helped neighboring Iran develop a
nuclear-weapons program.
Why phone me? I have written about Pakistan's nuclear-weapons
endeavors for more than 25 years. I have a variety of good contacts.
The woman who called me clearly thinks publicity could help her father
and the others. I previously wrote "Nuclear Spinning: The
Iran-Pakistan Link" in December for NRO, a few days after the first
arrests. It had been prompted by other telephone calls.
The story is bizarre. It is also probably true although it is safe
to assume we have so far learned only a fraction of that truth. In
essence, the story is that Pakistani scientists, directly or
indirectly, allowed Iran to acquire centrifuges suitable for enriching
uranium. The centrifuges were discovered when international inspectors
visited Iran last year, much to the embarrassment of President Pervez
Musharraf, Pakistan's military leader turned dictator. Under pressure
to cooperate with the U.S. against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda,
Musharraf himself is threatened by Islamic extremists, as two failed
assassination attempts in the last month testify. Iran's public
nuclear-centrifuge admission is giving Washington an excuse to hammer
Pakistan for its long history of reckless proliferation, previously
thought to have been in exchange for Chinese and North Korean
assistance. But whatever Musharraf might have known about Iran for
years, first as a senior general, and then as chief of army staff (the
Pakistani army is guardian of the country's nuclear project), he is
now claiming total ignorance and innocence as head of state.
The arrested men all worked at the Khan Research Laboratories, a
uranium-enrichment plant outside the capital city of Islamabad. In
1981, the then military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, gave the plant
its current name in honor of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who created it in
the 1970s. This gesture was intended to annoy the United States, and
it did. What is going on now appears, in part, to be Washington's
revenge. Using the Iran-centrifuge scandal, Washington can pressure
Musharraf to shut down perhaps half of his nuclear-weapons projects.
Khan himself was retired on his 65th birthday in April 2001, against
his own wishes. President Musharraf, who had taken power in a military
coup in 1999, apparently was responding to U.S. demands. He also
retired Khan's main rival, Samar Mubarakmand, at the same time. Khan
had followed the highly enriched-uranium route to the bomb;
Mubarakmand's team had followed the plutonium route. Both groups
successfully tested devices in Pakistan's May 1998 nuclear blasts.
Both teams also separately worked on providing Pakistan with missiles
capable of carrying nuclear bombs. Khan's group acquired a Nodong
production line from North Korea the missile is known as the Ghauri
in Pakistan, and is in operational service. The plutonium team chose
the Chinese M-11 missile, known in Pakistan as the Shaheen.
Last month the Pakistani government briefed a select few of its
journalists to report that rogue scientists had used German
go-betweens to sell their secrets to Iran. The scientists had also
been helped by two Sri Lankan businessmen in Dubai, the journalists
were told. "The [scientists] were motivated entirely by money," went
the briefing line.
Khan's name did not appear in the subsequent reports, but it is clear
that Khan is considered the center of the web. He probably hasn't been
arrested himself only because he is a national hero. In Pakistan, he
is known as "the father of the Islamic bomb." But he has been invited
in for questioning nonetheless, most recently last Saturday evening.
It started at 6 P.M. and was not finished until after 9 P.M. A friend
who spoke to him later reported that, although Khan said he was okay,
he sounded exhausted.
Two other men were detained around the same time: Major Islam ul-Haq,
Khan's personal staff officer, and Nazeer Ahmed, a director at KRL
with a British Ph.D., who was Khan's principal and closest aide in the
KRL headquarters for many years. The men arrested in December had been
linked to centrifuge production and purchases of equipment from
abroad. One, Saeed Ahmed, had been head of the centrifuge-design
office, another, Yasin Chohan, ran a production line. Both have been
released. A third, Farooq Mohammed, is still detained; his family went
to court last week to secure his release. This week, they will learn
the result but they are not optimistic. Legal niceties about habeas
corpus take second place in a military regime.
The story could be bigger than just leaks of uranium-enrichment
technology. Two other men arrested last week, Abdul Majid and Mansoor
Alam (also directors at KRL), had both been directly involved in the
first 1998 nuclear test, watching from a distance when a device using
highly enriched uranium had been detonated under the Chagai Hills in
Pakistan's southwestern region.
But to believe the storyline dictated so far by the Musharraf regime,
you have to believe that a group of scientists, motivated by national
glory (the quest for a bomb), was distracted by the opportunity to
earn a quick buck (selling secrets to Iran, a potential enemy). The
whole escapade apparently completely escaped the notice of a wide
array of governments, some military, some democratic.
None of this makes any sense, yet. But with the keywords "Iran,"
"Islamic terrorism," and "nuclear proliferation," this should be one
of the stories to watch in 2004.
================================================================================
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| User: "nkdatta8839" |
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| Title: Re: Keeping A Nuke Peddler In Line |
09 Feb 2004 12:21:58 PM |
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-pakistan9feb09,1,2529637.story
LA Times
February 9, 2004
EDITORIAL
Pakistan Owes U.S. Answers
Pakistan's clandestine sharing of nuclear plans and technology with
the likes of North Korea and Libya has been exposed, but that should
not end tough questions from Washington and international weapons
inspectors.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf loaded his country's nuclear
proliferation sins onto the shoulders of the nation's premier nuclear
scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, last week and then pardoned Khan, who is
revered as a national hero.
That was a sharp contrast with Musharraf's promise in December to
punish "enemies of the state" who passed on nuclear secrets.
The Bush administration praised Pakistan for breaking up Khan's
network of proliferation, but it maintained a discreet silence last
week about Khan's claim that he alone was responsible for passing on
nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
Khan's confession contained the blame short of the barracks door. The
army has ruled Pakistan much of the time since independence in 1947.
Even when civilians governed, the army remained the dominant power.
Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, remains an army general.
Musharraf's pardon of Khan may short-circuit complaints from hard-line
Muslims and other Musharraf opponents that he has torn down a man
whose scientific exploits made Pakistan secure against India and gave
an Islamic nation the bomb. Islamic radicals are the prime suspects in
two attempts to assassinate Musharraf in December. His enemies accused
him of caving in to Washington after Sept. 11, 2001, when he ended
Pakistan's support for the Taliban in next-door Afghanistan. The same
foes charge him now with knuckling under to U.S. pressure in
investigating Khan.
But if Washington is publicly silent, it should be privately
thundering for answers. Khan should be made to produce a list of the
companies that provided him with metals for centrifuges and other
technology and the names of those to whom he gave nuclear blueprints
and essential machinery to make weapons. Musharraf last week refused
to open Pakistan's nuclear facilities to international inspection, and
Pakistan has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency will have
to use all means of intelligence, from satellites overhead to spies on
the ground, to do a better job of ensuring that no more nuclear
secrets leave Pakistan. Musharraf has to live up to his pledge to stop
the nuclear leakage if he wants Pakistan to be seen, in the long run,
as more than just another rogue nation.
================================================================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17474-2004Feb5.html
Washington Post
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A22
EDITORIAL
Giving Pakistan a Pass
THE ATTEMPT by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to whitewash his
country's marketing of nuclear weapons technology to rogue
dictatorships and sponsors of terrorism comes as no surprise. The
general and his government have been lying for years about the illegal
traffic. Now that their cover has been blown by evidence supplied to
the United Nations by Libya and Iran, they are attempting to pin all
the blame on a single scientist while stonewalling any international
investigation. On Wednesday Abdul Qadeer Khan, the chief designer of
Pakistan's atomic weapons, confessed on television to selling his work
through an international black market and claimed he acted alone --
contradicting his previous implication of Mr. Musharraf and other top
generals. Yesterday Mr. Musharraf duly pardoned him, called him a hero
and declared that Pakistan would not supply documentation to the
International Atomic Energy Agency or admit its investigators.
Such belligerence could be expected from a military ruler. What's hard
to believe is the Bush administration's reaction to it. Rather than
moving to impose sanctions on Pakistan -- action that might be
expected for a government that has been caught providing the
technology for nuclear weapons to such countries as Iran, Libya and
North Korea -- it has swallowed his coverup and even congratulated him
on it. "We value the commitments Mr. Musharraf has made to prevent the
expertise in Pakistan from reaching other places," State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday. "We think that Pakistan is
taking serious efforts to end the activities of a dangerous network."
As for the pardon of Mr. Khan -- who by Pakistan's account is probably
the worst criminal in the history of nuclear weapons proliferation --
"I don't think it's a matter for the United States to sit in judgment
on," Mr. Boucher said.
President Bush has said since Sept. 11, 2001, that his first mission
as president is to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction
to terrorists and the regimes that sponsor them. His national security
doctrine declares that even preemptive military action is justified in
order to stop it. Yet now that Pakistan's regime has been caught
making such transfers, his administration is seemingly prepared to
accept its implausible alibi, allow the very generals who oversaw the
traffic to investigate it, and trust that they won't do it again.
There's no need for U.S. or U.N. action, suggests Mr. Boucher: "What
penalties, sanctions, controls or steps are used to prevent it from
happening again, those are up for individual governments to decide,"
he said. "It's up to the Pakistani government to make sure that this
sort of thing doesn't happen again." Iran and North Korea, which are
facing U.S. demands for intrusive international inspections and the
threat of a referral to the U.N. Security Council, may take comfort
from those words.
The administration's dilemma is that it has banked its policy toward
Pakistan on its relationship with Mr. Musharraf, who has been showered
with aid and praise in exchange for half-measures against terrorism
and promises about stopping proliferation. Perhaps there is no
alternative to a relationship with the general. But that relationship
cannot be the only defense against further delivery of Pakistan's
nuclear weapons technology to enemies of the United States. Mr. Bush
should insist that Pakistan supply the details of its trafficking to
the IAEA and allow outside monitoring of its programs. Stopping
Pakistan's proliferation is vital to U.S. security. It cannot be left
to Mr. Musharraf to decide how or whether it will be done.
================================================================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14272-2004Feb4.html
Washington Post
Thursday, February 5, 2004; Page A20
EDITORIAL
Pakistan's Nuclear Crimes
WHILE WASHINGTON has been debating the failure to find weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, an extraordinary series of revelations has
confirmed that Pakistan has been guilty of some of the worst crimes of
nuclear weapons proliferation ever committed. For some 15 years it has
been supplying atomic bomb technology to rogue states and sponsors of
terrorism -- and it did so even after President Bush declared that
governments that conducted such transfers could be subject to
preemptive attack by the United States. Under pressure from the United
Nations, Pakistani officials have acknowledged that nuclear designs
and materials were given to Iran, Libya and North Korea, either
directly or through an underground network involving middlemen in
Germany and a secret factory in Malaysia. Officials claim the traffic
was conducted solely by the country's chief weapons scientist, Abdul
Qadeer Khan, and several associates. Hoping to avoid prosecution, Mr.
Khan duly confessed on Pakistani television yesterday and absolved his
government. But the scientist previously gave investigators a more
plausible account: that President Pervez Musharraf and other senior
military leaders approved the deals.
For more than two years the Bush administration has embraced Mr.
Musharraf as a strategic ally and overlooked his suppression of
Pakistani democracy and his coddling of Islamic extremists. Now the
administration must confront the reality that Pakistan's military
leadership has done more to threaten U.S. and global security with
weapons of mass destruction than either al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein.
Were Pakistan not a professed ally of the United States, its behavior
would meet the criteria for preemptive military intervention outlined
in Mr. Bush's national security strategy. He is not contemplating such
action, nor should he be. But the United States must ensure that
Pakistan never again markets its nuclear weapons technology. That will
require more than extracting further promises of good behavior from an
unreliable general.
Mr. Musharraf, who narrowly survived two recent assassination
attempts, has made lots of promises to Washington since Sept. 11,
2001. Most have not been fulfilled. When asked about Pakistan's
commerce with Iran and North Korea, he either denied that it occurred
or implied that he put a stop to it. But Pakistani military cargo
flights to North Korea took place as late as 2002. Last fall the
United States arranged the interception of a Libya-bound shipment of
industrial equipment for nuclear weapons. It turns out the goods were
supplied by the network connected to Mr. Khan.
Mr. Musharraf can be expected to go on denying responsibility for the
illegal trafficking while promising to stop it. His word should not be
enough. The Bush administration and its allies have insisted that
other nations guilty of illegal nuclear weapons activity, including
Iran and Libya, submit to strict international inspections. Pakistan
is not a signatory to international nuclear arms agreements; no
outside authority regulates its nuclear programs. That should change.
If it is to remain a friend of the United States and receive the
billions in aid promised by the Bush administration, Pakistan should
be required to commit itself formally to stop proliferating -- and the
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