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Iran, North Korea join nuclear blame
game
Iran has rejected a
confession by top Pakistani scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer
Khan that he passed nuclear secrets to Tehran for
personal profit. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hamid Reza Asefi said on Monday that "what is being
raised in the media" about Khan's admissions "is not
true".
The spokesman acknowledged that
Tehran obtained some foreign nuclear know-how from
middlemen, but made no mention of having received
technology made available by Khan on the black market.
He said the
Iranian government recently provided the United Nations'
nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), with the names of some of the illicit brokers at
the agency's request.
North Korea, too, has
denied the admission by Khan that he sold
nuclear-weapons technology to the state. A statement by
a Foreign Ministry spokesman described the claim as
"false propaganda" spread by the United States, the
state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
The spokesman said that the "US smear campaign"
justified Pyongyang's moves "to build [a] nuclear
deterrent force". It was North Korea's first official
response to the Pakistani disclosures. The denial comes
just weeks before new six-way talks on Pyongyang's
nuclear-weapons program are to begin in Beijing on
February 25.
On Monday, US Secretary of State
Colin Powell said he had urged Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf to make sure no more of the
secret nuclear exchange network remained. "This is
nothing but mean and groundless propaganda," the North
Korean spokesman said. "This is aimed to scour the
interior of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of
Korea] on the basis of a legitimate mandate and attack
it, just as what it did in Iraq in the end, and invent a
pretext to ... scuttle the projected six-way talks," the
Korean statement said.
The nuclear dispute with
North Korea was triggered in 2002 when Washington said
Pyongyang had admitted to harboring an enriched-uranium
program. North Korea has since claimed to have finished
reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods being stored at
Yongbyon - enough to help it build up to six nuclear
weapons.
The Iranian denial, meanwhile, of any
direct connection with Khan will come as an
embarrassment to Musharraf, who has heaped all blame on
the "rogue" scientist in a move that many interpret as a
way to deflect attention from any possible involvement
of the Pakistani army in proliferation.
Last
Wednesday, Khan publicly confessed on Pakistani national
television to transferring nuclear technology to Iran,
Libya and North Korea during the 1980s and 1990s. Khan,
who last week received a full pardon from Musharraf,
said his activities were not authorized by Islamabad. "I
also wish to clarify that there was never, ever, any
kind of authorization for these activities by the
government. I take full responsibility for my actions
and seek [the Pakistani people's] pardon," he said.
Nuclear experts say Pakistan is widely believed
to be the technology source for Iran's efforts to enrich
uranium beyond levels needed for peaceful energy
purposes. Those efforts were revealed by an armed
Iranian opposition group in exile two years ago, leading
to an ongoing IAEA investigation into Iran's suspected
covert nuclear-weapons program.
Gary Samore, a
weapons-proliferation expert at the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies, described
the suspected Pakistan-Iran nuclear link this way: "I
think it is generally accepted that Pakistan provided
centrifuge technology - which is a technique for
producing weapons-grade uranium - to Iran back in the
late 1980s, and that, on that basis, Iran has
subsequently pursued its own centrifuge program. The
unknown question is whether or not Pakistan also
provided nuclear-weapons-design information to
Iran."
Samore said the question of whether Iran
acquired additional nuclear secrets from Pakistan arises
because it is known that Khan sold such information to
Libya. "Now we know, in the case of Libya, because the
Libyans have acknowledged it, [that] they paid US$50
million to A Q Khan and company for a nuclear-weapons
design," he said. "Whether Iran received a similar
design is something that is not publicly known and,
hopefully, the Pakistani government - having
investigated A Q Khan's activities - will be in a
position to share that kind of information with relevant
governments, including the United States, as well as
international agencies like the IAEA."
Analysts
say that learning the truth about how much nuclear
information Tehran received from Pakistan is essential
to learning just what weapons-making capabilities Iran
may still be concealing from investigators. But Samore
says that, despite Khan's confessions, investigating the
technology transfers is exceedingly difficult.
The nuclear expert notes that it remains far
from certain whether Khan operated independently. Khan -
who is highly regarded at home as the "father" of
Pakistan's nuclear bomb - headed a key government
nuclear laboratory until he was forced to retire by
Musharraf in early 2001. In an interview with the New
York Times this week, Musharraf said he forced Khan to
retire from his post as head of Khan Research
Laboratories (KRL) to prevent him transferring any more
nuclear secrets. That is the first time the general has
cited Khan's nuclear activities as the reason for his
departure. Previously the dismissal was attributed to US
pressure over feared KRL links to al-Qaeda.
Samore notes that because Pakistan is not a
signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),
Islamabad - unlike Tehran - is under no international
obligation to cooperate with IAEA efforts to investigate
sales of nuclear secrets. He also says that Musharraf
may have little reason to back any wide-ranging IAEA or
other public investigation into how Khan sold Pakistani
nuclear secrets because the results could be politically
explosive.
"Musharraf is in a bind. On one hand,
it is very unlikely that A Q Khan carried out these
activities over the last 15 years without senior members
of the Pakistani military and the intelligence service
being aware of it, although they might not have known
about every detail," Samore said.
He continued:
"But, on the other hand, if Musharraf conducts a full
investigation, he is very likely to create domestic
political problems for himself - not only because of A Q
Khan's popularity but also because Musharraf would be
forced to investigate all of his predecessors as army
chief of staff, which is likely to cause trouble in the
Pakistani army, and that is Musharraf's principal power
base."
That means that much about how Iran and
other states acquired nuclear secrets from Pakistan may
never become fully clear. However, on Wednesday, US
President George W Bush is expected to give a major
speech on proliferation. He is expected to include new
proposals for dealing with rogue scientists and with
countries that have not signed the NPT. Such countries
include Pakistan, India and Israel.
Powell is
due to travel to Islamabad soon to meet with Musharraf,
in an apparent effort to maintain pressure on Islamabad
to make sure it curbs the activities of Khan and his
associates in the future. No firm date for the trip has
yet been announced.
Pakistan's problems not
over yet
Khan's transgressions in nuclear
proliferation - if his confession is to be believed -
are virtually the world's first major case of the wanton
spreading of the deadly knowledge and technology of
nuclear weapons. Before this, the technology had been
restricted to eight states: the United States, Russia,
China, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India and
Pakistan.
This case of proliferation is claimed
to be no crime, according to Pakistan's statutes, except
perhaps the violation of the Official Secrets Act of
1923. Yet Khan's actions must have included the theft of
state and government property, as everything that was
developed at KRL at Kahuta obviously belonged to the
Pakistan state. There is also a breach of implicit trust
in the actions, for which presidential pardon has been
given. Yet Musharraf has allowed him to go free.
Few foreigners can find Khan's story credible:
that a few rogue scientists and security personnel, on
their own and for personal gain, stole the nuclear
know-how and technology and sold them to the underworld
- and no government or official was involved at any
stage.
The United States and other powers keen
on stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction are certainly not amused, but have been
restrained in their criticism as Pakistan is an
important ally in the "war on terrorism". Here is a
proven case of large-scale pilferage and buying and
selling of what was the most sought-after knowledge and
equipment by what Washington calls rogue states. Had
Iran and Libya not succumbed to US and UN pressures on
nuclear issues in recent months, Washington promised
terrible consequences.
Some parts of the story
are true: there was absolutely no financial control over
Khan's decisions because he could go anywhere he liked,
whenever he chose to, and could spend virtually any
amount, including in precious hard currency. As
Musharraf has emphasized, security at KRL was under Khan
and there was no command or control authority over him.
The auditor general was bypassed.
But two other
questions need to be asked. First, neither Khan nor
Musharraf has so much as mentioned North Korea. Was any
nuclear equipment sold to Pyongyang? If so, when?
Second, how could the Pakistani army not have known what
was going on right under its nose?
The army runs
a tight ship - its grip on all aspects of life in
Pakistan is uniformly firm. It does not rely on only one
intelligence agency: it has two of its own and controls
and runs several of the normal governmental apparatuses.
Nothing moves in Pakistan without the three major
intelligence agencies noticing it. So how could the army
not know about the transfer of nuclear technology?
For Pakistanis, it is too serious a national
lapse to worry about who gets the ultimate blame. After
all, the ultimate consequences will be visited on all
the people. No one can buy the facile theory that a few
individuals organized or joined an underworld, spread
over four continents, to make money out of Pakistan's
perceived great achievement.
Foreigners and
Pakistanis alike are sure to suspect that Khan had the
active support and assistance of successive army chiefs,
especially General Aslam Beg, who led the army from
1988-91 and during whose reign this grand smuggling
enterprise began.
As it happens, as mentioned,
Musharraf is precious to the US "war on terror".
Washington has accepted the story at face value for the
time being. Other major nuclear powers have reasons not
to raise a rumpus. Musharraf is also trying to make up
with India, and the Indians are reasonably pleased with
him.
But that does not mean Khan and company
have gotten away safely. For one thing, Musharraf is
taking his time with the rest of the scientists and
security men now in jail. For another, it is only the
beginning of a new and perhaps longer story.
Most Pakistanis expect that once Musharraf's
utility for stabilizing the Afghan situation in its
low-intensity war is over, Pakistan may see a new US
face on this issue. The kind of activity that has gone
on in Pakistan is sure to receive a close hard look from
the White House, no matter who its tenant is. Many
others, too, will then join the United States in
reopening the case. Maybe the army's overlordship of
Pakistan's governance will be imperiled on pain of the
threat of UN sanctions.
Immediate reaction to
the disgrace of Khan was manifest the day after his
"admission": there was a countrywide strike in Pakistan.
Bigger businesses remained shut and road transport in
urban areas remained sparse. The reason for the success
of the strike was the people's shock and not so much
because of the popularity of those who gave the call -
the alliance of religious parties. Musharraf himself has
called Khan his hero and praised his earlier
contribution to national security.
In domestic
politics, the whole affair is a setback to the big
pro-bomb lobby. Some say they do not believe the charges
against the "national hero" despite the reports of
Khan's corruption in possessing huge real-estate assets
and foreign accounts bulging with millions of dollars.
But Khan's charisma and stature are sure to
suffer as time passes and the dimensions of what has
happened and what might yet happen sink in. The small
anti-bomb lobby believes that so long as the nuclear
weapons stay in the armories of India and Pakistan, the
secondary threat of proliferation and accident remain.
They are not too hopeful about the current thaw
between India and Pakistan because of the mischief the
nuclear-weapons issue plays. Only a nuclear-safe
arrangement - an oxymoron really in South Asia's current
state - is on the agenda.
(Asia Times Online,
with additional reporting by Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty and Inter Press Service)
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