Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 24, 2002
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=29268104
The United States may have endangered
India's security, and also that of its Far East allies Japan and South
Korea, not to speak of jeopardising the lives of its own 100,000 troops
in the region, by willfully ignoring nuclear and ballistic missile transactions
between North Korea and Pakistan in an effort to secure the latter's cooperation
in the war on terrorism.
These transgressions occurred as
recently as last July when American intelligence agencies tracked a Pakistani
cargo aircraft as it landed at a North Korean airfield and took on a secret
payload: ballistic missile parts, the chief export of North Korea's military,
the New York Times reported in its Sunday editions.
The missile imports are aimed at
building a nuclear arsenal that would bring every strategic site in India
within Pakistan's range, the paper said.
Astonishingly, the Pakistanis used
American-built C-130, given to it by Washington ostensibly to fight terrorism,
for the operation.
"The shipment was brazen enough,
in full view of American spy satellites. intelligence officials who described
the incident say even the mode of transport seemed a subtle slap at Washington,"
the Times' David Sanger, who reported the story from South Korea, wrote.
In the past, when questioned by
this correspondent about the supply of the C-130s, US officials had maintained
that they were "non-lethal" items Pakistan needed for anti-terrorism operations,
and said India need only be concerned if the US resumed the sale of f-16s
which was not going to happen.
The C-130's, the Times said, was
part of the military force that General Pervez Musharraf had told President
Bush last year would be devoted to hunting down the terrorists of al-Qaeda,
one reason the administration was hailing its new cooperation with a country
that only a year before it had labeled a rogue state.
"But several times since that new
alliance was cemented, American intelligence agencies watched silently
as Pakistan's air fleet conducted a deadly barter with North Korea," the
paper reported. "In transactions intelligence agencies are still unravelling,
the North provided General Musharraf with missile parts he needs to build
a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching every strategic site in India."
The revelations angered Indian officials,
who when contacted here in Washington and in New Delhi, testily said it
was "up to the United States to determine the efficacy of its policies."
"We have raised the issue (of nuclear
and missile proliferation between Pakistan and North Korea) before and
have been stonewalled. They don't want to shift the focus from Iraq," a
top Indian diplomat said on condition he not be named.
The NYT report said accounts of
the transactions raise disturbing questions about the nature of the uneasy
American alliance with General Musharraf's government. It cited unnamed
American officials and experts as describing how even after Musharraf sided
with the United States in ousting the Taliban and hunting down Qaeda leaders,
Pakistan's secretive A Q Khan Nuclear Research Laboratories continued its
murky relationship with the North Korean military.
"It was a partnership linking an
insecure Islamic nation and a failing Communist one, each in need of the
other's expertise," the report said.
Some experts go even further and
say China is complicit in this proliferation. According to William Triplett,
a former senior senate aide and a respected scholar on the region, Pakistan
cannot fly a C-130 across China to North Korea without re-fueling at a
Chinese air base.
"Either the administration has to
argue that China does not know what is going on between the Pakis and North
Korea or they have to accept the idea that Beijing is complicit. At least,"
Triplett said in an e-mail message to TNN.
Some US officials admit in private
that even if proliferation transgressions took place happening between
Pakistan and North Korea, but acknowledging it in public will enjoin Washington
to impose sanctions in Islamabad at a time when the US needs Pakistan's
cooperation in the war against terrorism.
But others question this proposition
and say one tough phone call and a threat to withhold all aid is all it
takes to bring Pakistan into line. That was pretty much what happened post
9/11 when General Musharraf dumped the Taliban and threw in his lot with
the US.
In fact, the story in the New York
Times, which follows similar accounts in other media, appears to be an
attempt by Washington's non-proliferation lobby to put pressure on the
administration to act.
