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Pakistan's nuclear aces win the
day
ISLAMABAD - In the end,
the Pakistani military's hand was just too strong.
After initially calling the bluff of the establishment,
the founder of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, Dr Abdul
Qadeer Khan, threw in his hand on Wednesday night - and
also threw himself at the mercy of President General
Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf on Thursday received a recommendation from the cabinet to
accept Khan's plea for clemency (immunity) after his
public acceptance of personal responsibility for
transferring Pakistan's nuclear technology to Iran,
Libya and North Korea during the 1980s and 1990s.
After being placed under house arrest for
interrogations, Khan at first tried to turn the tables
by alleging that top generals, including Musharraf, knew
of and were party to the transfers. (He is also reported
to have sent his daughter abroad with a tape naming
names of his military accomplices.) The government
claims that it was at no stage involved in, or aware of,
the illicit activities of Khan and his colleagues. It
attributes them solely to the "personal greed" of
"individual scientists" lacking official sanction.
A deal has obviously now been cut, so there is
no surprise at the cabinet's decision: now Khan will be
pardoned, a few lesser scientists will be tried, if at
all, and the Pakistan military's role in nuclear
proliferation over the years will remain a secret. This
outcome will appease many in Pakistan who resent the
"humiliation" of a national hero. Many Pakistanis
believe that Khan saved Pakistan from India by making
the atomic bomb.
A
pardon for Khan also tallies well with US
expectations. Washington certainly knows that the Pakistani
government is implicated in the clandestine commerce, but
Musharraf is a far too valuable an ally at the moment
to be compromised. The United States needs him to curb the
Taliban, to catch Osama bin Laden and the remnants of
al-Qaeda who are hiding out in the Pakistan-Afghanistan
border region, and as a potential leader of a moderate
Islamic state at a strategic location. As is so often
the case, Washington appears to be driven more by its
short-term tactical needs than the truth.
The
US State Department says it will be up to the Pakistani
government to make a decision "as to what should happen
to individuals and programs". Welcoming the outcome of
Islamabad's investigations, spokesman Richard Boucher
said: "It marks the sign of how seriously the government
takes the commitments that President Musharraf has made
to make sure that his nation is not a source of
prohibited technologies for other countries. We welcome
President Musharraf's actions, as do other members of
the international community, but it's for them to talk
about what they're doing," he added.
A third and
very interested part is India, which has maintained
uncharacteristic silence on the latest disclosures. An
Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman told Inter Press
Service that no statement is due: "There is nothing in
the pipeline." A year ago, by contrast, New Delhi
impounded a North Korean ship on suspicion that it was
carrying illicit nuclear and missile cargo.
All
three players have their own priorities and compulsions.
Pakistan is keen to preserve its nuclear program and its
army's political supremacy - at any cost. It is willing
to sacrifice some nuclear scientists by branding them
culprits in the covert technology trade.
New
Delhi is keen not to upset the peace process launched in
January after years of conflict with Pakistan. The first
formal meeting between the two countries is due to start
on February 16. Undue international pressure on
Musharraf or domestic agitation could jeopardize that
meeting. Privately, many Indian diplomats, like
strategic analysts, gloat over Pakistan's predicament.
But they will not go public. They are aware that
underscoring Pakistan's culpability in matters nuclear
could show India, too, in an uncomplimentary light: the
world tends to equate India and Pakistan in respect of
nuclear weapons and Kashmir. A Security Council
resolution (No 1172 of 1998) brackets the two while
condemning their nuclear tests. Like Pakistan, India
does not want world attention focused on its nuclear
weapons, as neither country has signed the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, it is
abundantly clear that Khan's nuclear transfers could not
have occurred without the consent of Pakistan's security
agencies, controlled by the military, which closely
guard its nuclear facilities and personnel.
The army has exclusive, unambiguous control over
Pakistan's nuclear program. No civilian leader has probably
been allowed to enter such facilities as the Kahuta enrichment
plant, barring Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a former president
trusted by the army. Former prime minister Benazir
Bhutto has complained that she could never enter Kahuta.
Khan and company could not have removed whole
centrifuges from Kahuta and put them into airplanes
without the military's consent. Similarly, Pakistan
reportedly used C-130 aircraft to lift missile
components from North Korea. In August 2002, one such
plane was photographed by a satellite. All this would
have needed the government's approval.
Unlike
the transfers of centrifuge designs to Iran and Libya,
the deals with North Korea seem like straightforward
official barters. By the late 1980s, Pakistan had
nuclear capability, but no missiles. To "counter" India,
it procured Nodong and Taepodong missiles from North Korea.
Personal corruption would seem to have been marginal in
this transaction.
The ramifications of the
clandestine network cut across continents, with a
factory making centrifuge components in Malaysia run by
a Sri Lankan, middlemen from Germany and the
Netherlands, and hardware shipments routed through Dubai
in the United Arab Emirates. Khan held meetings in
Istanbul in Turkey and Casablanca in Morocco, and
chartered aircraft to different destinations.
His reported "confessions" will reinforce
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed
ElBaradei's assessment, after disclosures by Libya
and Iran to the agency, that "international export
controls have completely failed in recent years. A
nuclear black market has emerged, driven by fantastic
cleverness ... Nuclear businessmen, unscrupulous firms
and perhaps also state bodies are involved. Libya and
Iran made extensive use of this network."
Khan
was part of a gigantic illicit operation centered on the
proliferation of mass-destruction weapons technology.
The least this revelation demands is that the US
government and Pakistan publish the list of clandestine
suppliers and middlemen in different countries so that
they can be prosecuted. Details that have emerged to
date point to the most complex, elaborate and successful
operations to transfer nuclear weapons technology
undertaken anywhere since the Manhattan Project, which
invented nuclear weapons.
Equally important are legal
prohibitions on trade in nuclear materials. The existing
IAEA framework is far too loose. Huge quantities
of weapons-grade fissile material routinely pass
through civilian nuclear facilities the world over. Plutonium,
only five kilograms of which is enough to make
a Nagasaki-type bomb, is traded in amounts such as tens
of tonnes. There are large quantities of MUF (material
unaccounted for) in the world's reprocessing
facilities.
Pakistan's involvement in this shady
world has now been confirmed, but for now at least, it
appears that this is as far as the story will run. Or is
it?
Gary
Samore, a weapons-proliferation expert at the
London-based International Institute for Strategic
Studies, reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
comments: "Washington's primary concern is that
Musharraf and the Pakistani authorities really put an
end to any further leakage of nuclear technology out of
Pakistan. Keep in mind that this has been going on now
since the late 1980s. At least three countries have been
identified as having obtained sensitive nuclear
technology from Pakistan. And two others, according to
press reports, have been approached and declined.
"I
think from Washington's standpoint, the key issue is
whether the Pakistani authorities really take effective
action, after all of the embarrassment that they've
suffered, and really stop any further transfers," Samore
said.
(Asia Times
Online. Additional reporting by Praful Bidwai of Inter
Press Service in New Delhi.)
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