Author: Selig S. Harrison
Publication: The Mercury News
Date: May 30, 2003
URL: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/5975805.htm
When the United States revealed
last October that Pakistan had supplied uranium enrichment technology to
North Korea, the Bush administration did not pin the blame on the U.S.-backed
military ruler in Islamabad, General Pervez Musharraf. Secretary of State
Colin Powell endorsed Musharraf's claim that he had stopped the nuclear
transfers to Pyongyang initiated by his civilian predecessors.
Evidence now suggests that nuclear
collaboration between Pyongyang and Islamabad did not stop when Musharraf
staged his army coup in October 1999, and may still be continuing.
Firm U.S. action is urgently needed
to guard against further Pakistani nuclear transfers not only to North
Korea but also to other would-be nuclear powers, notably Saudi Arabia,
and to prevent the leakage of Pakistani fissile material to terrorist groups.
After a six-month internal policy
battle, the administration decided in late March not to impose sanctions
against Pakistan for helping the North Korean nuclear program. Yet evidence
abounds that Pakistan provided uranium enrichment technology to Pyongyang
beginning in 1998 in exchange for missiles.
A Department of Energy report in
1999 and a CIA report in June 2001, recently revealed by investigative
reporter Seymour Hersh, provide detailed evidence of this collaboration
and of Musharraf's complicity in continuing nuclear transfers to Pyongyang
after his coup.
Soon after Musharraf took over in
1999, the United States pressed him to remove the controversial czar of
the Pakistani nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, who has visited North Korea 13
times. Musharraf did not oust Khan until March 2001 and continued to retain
him as a special adviser.
Three months later, the administration
was still openly suspicious of Pakistani collaboration with Pyongyang.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told The Financial Times on
June 1, 2001, that ``people who were employed by the nuclear agency and
have retired may be assisting North Korea with its nuclear program.''
The ``smoking gun'' that triggered
the U.S. confrontation with North Korea over the uranium issue last October
was the discovery of an incriminating document two months earlier showing
that Pakistan was still helping North Korea at that late date, three years
after Musharraf took power.
According to the CIA, Pakistan used
U.S.-supplied C-130 transport planes to ship six Nodong missiles from North
Korea to the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories in March. This provoked the
imposition of trade sanctions against the Khan Laboratories and the North
Korean Changgwong Corporation, barring them from trade with U.S. firms.
But the State Department stressed that the sanctions related solely to
missiles and had nothing to do with nuclear technology.
The continuing transfer of North
Korean missiles to Pakistan raises the question of how Islamabad is paying
for them. It was Pakistan's inability to pay in cash in 1998 that prompted
its offer to pay instead with uranium enrichment technology. In this latest
transaction, if Islamabad is not paying with nuclear technology, is it
using some of the cash given by the United States since 9/11 to buy missiles
from Pyongyang?
The importance of a strict nuclear
inspection regime in Pakistan is underlined by the growing danger that
Saudi Arabia will seek to obtain Pakistani nuclear technology and weaponry
in the increasingly likely event that Iran should become a nuclear power.
In a recent interview, Charles Freeman,
former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh, said that King Fahd had told high-level
U.S. officials on several occasions that Saudi Arabia would need a nuclear
deterrent if Iran does develop nuclear weapons. At that time, Freeman said,
the king envisaged a U.S. nuclear umbrella.
Given the tensions between Washington
and Riyadh over the Iraq invasion, Riyadh is now likely to loosen, not
tighten, its military ties to the United States, and Islamabad would be
a more plausible nuclear partner for Riyadh than Washington.
On August 2, 2002, the Saudi defense
minister was taken on a tour of Pakistani nuclear facilities, and lesser
Saudi defense officials have visited Pakistani nuclear sites on two other
occasions. Perhaps the most compelling argument for a U.S. nuclear inspection
regime in Pakistan is that its nuclear facilities are riddled with Al-Qaida
sympathizers who might smuggle fissile material out to terrorists.
In return for intrusive nuclear
inspections, the United States should be prepared to offer Pakistan compelling
new economic incentives, including access to the U.S. textile market, which
it has been seeking in vain since it signed on as a U.S. ally after 9/11.
Stepped-up textile exports to the
huge U.S. market would be an economic bonanza for Pakistan. Offering this
would give the United States the leverage it needs for a showdown with
Islamabad on nuclear inspections. President Bush has been reluctant to
confront U.S. protectionist interests opposed to letting in Pakistani imports,
but he should be willing to spend some of his political capital on this
issue.
Stopping nuclear non-proliferation
is a paramount U.S. interest, no less important than combating Al-Qaida.
(Selig S. Harrison, director of
the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington,
is the author of ``Korean Endgame.'')
