Author: Editorial
Publication: The Times, UK
Date: January 20, 2004
Musharraf must shed light on Pakistan's
nuclear dealings
The plot thickens. US and UN allegations
that Pakistani nuclear weapons technology may have been shared with Iran,
Libya and North Korea over the past two decades have prompted a flurry
of supposed investigation inside the country.
The Pakistani Government, which
values the relationship it has developed with Washington, denies that it
has transferred nuclear technology to Libya or North Korea - though officials
do concede that individual rogue scientists may conceivably have sold nuclear
technology to Iran in the late 1980s. Equally, the Pakistani Government
says that it had nothing to do with a separate alleged plot, by a South
African businessman now under arrest in the United States, to export trigger
devices. American investigators say that the large number of triggers has
raised the possibility of covert Pakistani government involvement.
Encouraged by President Musharraf's
weekend speech to parliament, in which he said that Pakistan must convince
the world that it is not a proliferator of nuclear weapons, officials have
questioned several military officers and nuclear weapons experts close
to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme.
The role of Dr Khan himself is so
far undefined. During questioning in December, this national hero - the
creator of Pakistan's first nuclear bomb in 1998, after whom the nuclear
A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories are named - said that nuclear cooperation
with Iran in the late 1980s was authorised by the army.
What he knows about any subsequent
transfers has not been made clear, although the fact that his assistant
was detained while dining at Dr Khan's home on Saturday evening suggests
that investigators see a link.
Conspiracy theories abound. The
family of one detained scientist accuses the Pakistani Government of detaining
low-level scientists as scapegoats to appease the United States. Such rumours
flow from the failure of the Pakistani administration to prove that it
has not, tacitly or explicitly, been a serial proliferator.
Common sense suggests that a handful
of rogue scientists, however gifted and high-ranking, cannot proliferate
alone. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is closely guarded by the military; it
seems inconceivable that this sensitive technology could have been transferred
without any military or government knowledge. The network of transfers
becoming visible in the wake of Libya's recent surprise disclosure of its
nuclear weapons programme constituted a significant international business
spread across countries and continents. Components of Libya's uranium-enrichment
facilities, for example, were reportedly manufactured in Malaysia as recently
as 2001.
President Musharraf must explain
himself, making clear who in power was behind the spread of nuclear know-how
and why. Dabbling in the nuclear trade is not in the interests of a country
rebuilding its economy and international profile.
The secretive transfers of the past
appear to have been from state to state, but the willingness of scientists
to deal in this deadly equipment raises the prospect of sales to terrorist
groups. If ungovernable elements in Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment
have been at work, it is up to President Musharraf to take action and provide
a more coherent explanation both to the UN and to his own people.
He is trying to satisfy both political
opponents and the international community, but, unless he is prepared to
take concentrated action, the dangers of proliferation will not recede.
