Author:
Publication: Sify News
Date: June 13, 2003
URL: http://headlines.sify.com/2200news1.html
An influential US foreign policy
scholar has issued a ominous warning that Pakistan's nuclear weapons and
materials could soon fall into the hands of forces allied with al-Qaeda
and other extremist groups.
''The most immediate nuclear threat
does not lie in North Korea, in Iran or in leakage of weapons and material
from the former Soviet Union.It is in Pakistan,'' Ted Van Dyk, a visiting
scholar at the Institute for International Policy at the University of
Washington, said.
Writing in the Seattle Post, he
said Pakistan, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism and a country in which
Osama bin Laden most likely is hiding and being protected, has a stockpile
of nuclear weapons and materials.
''It soon could be controlled by
forces allied with al-Qaeda and other groups.''
Van Dyk pointed out that the Pakistani
finance minister was shouted down in Parliament last weekend when he tried
to present his government's budget.
For many months, he said, Islamic
hard-liners in the parliament have disrupted proceedings, staged walkouts
and paralysed governance.
''Imagine if you will some 40 per
cent of the US Congress utilising '60s' Students for a Democratic Society
tactics to stop legislative business.''
It was hard to cry for Pakistan
President Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a coup four years ago.
''But beyond him might lay the abyss. Using time-tested tactics, fundamentalists
are trying to cause enough chaos to force Musharraf to rule by decree,''
Van Dyk said.
That could polarise Pakistani politics,
make a peace deal with India impossible and bring to power an Osama-friendly
regime, he added.
North Korea has said it will sell
nukes, technology and materials to other countries. Its conventional forces
and capabilities already are strong enough to destroy Seoul in a few days
and kill thousands of US troops in South Korea, he said.
Oil-rich Iran, using the same specious
argument as North Korea -- that it required nuclear reactors for energy
purposes -- has with Russian help come to the verge of a nuclear capability.
''These countries pose a lethal
threat. But the Pakistani threat is greater because it could put the same
weapons in the hands of a government tied to terrorist networks.''
If al-Qaeda allies were to come
to power in Pakistan and then in Saudi Arabia, Osama's home country, the
world's strategic balance would tip dangerously, Van Dyk said.
''We went to war to remove the threat
of special weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein. But we cannot repeat
Iraq in Pakistan, North Korea or Iran."
''We must trust diplomacy, mobilisation
of neighboring countries to isolate the threats and, in the end, luck,''
he added.
