POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA:
New Moves Underway in Nuclear Poker
Commentary - By Praful Bidwai
NEW DELHI, Feb 5 (IPS) - Pakistan's government clearly seems to be moving
toward putting on trial some of the individuals allegedly involved in
clandestine transfer of nuclear weapons technology and components from
Pakistan to North Korea, Iran and Libya.
This is the signal that Islamabad is sending after the latest official
disclosures about the detailed 'confession' signed by the 'Father of the
Pakistani Bomb', Abdul Qadeer Khan, and the arrest of four of his colleagues.
Khan has tried to turn the tables on his interrogators by alleging that
top generals, including President Gen Pervez Musharraf, knew of and were
party to the transfers. (He is also believed to have sent his daughter
abroad with a tape naming names of his military accomplices.)
On Saturday, Khan was sacked as scientific adviser to the government.
Since then, more indications have emerged of the government's intentions
from a two-and-a half hour presentation made at a special briefing on
Sunday for journalists. Specific illicit activities on the part of
personnel of Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) were detailed at that briefing.
These point to one of the most complex, elaborate and successful
operations to transfer nuclear weapons technology, undertaken anywhere
since the Manhattan Project, which invented nuclear weapons.
Going by the damning indictment of Dr Khan that emerges from the
official briefing, the metallurgist would be guilty of serious
proliferation-related offences and of selling Pakistan's nuclear secrets.
According to military sources, quoted in the media, trying Khan is a
"sensitive" issue, on which no decision has yet been taken.
Khan's interrogation has been described as the "humiliation" of a
"national hero" by the religious far right. Many Pakistanis have been led
to believe Khan "saved Pakistan" from India by making the Bomb.
Musharraf's government thus finds itself in a dilemma. On the one hand,
it is under enormous pressure from the United States to punish those
responsible for the illicit nuclear trade. On the other, a fair trial
could produce embarrassing disclosures about the role of the military in
the operation.
As this mutual sparring between Khan and the government-or blackmail,
depending on how one sees it-continues, the major actors are playing out
roles designed not to rock the boat.
The government claims that it was at no stage involved in, or aware of,
the illicit activities of Khan and his colleagues. It attributes them
solely to the "personal greed" of "individual scientists" lacking official
sanction. There are serious doubts about this assertion.
Yet, the U.S. government, which has been investigating the nuclear
transfer allegations and which recently confronted Pakistan with evidence,
has chosen to go along with this line. The State Department has even
complimented Islamabad for its recent actions.
Washington knows the Pakistan government is implicated in the
clandestine commerce, but Musharraf is a far too valuable ally at the
moment to be compromised. It needs him both for its Afghanistan operation
and as a potential leader of a moderate Islamic state at a strategic
location. Washington is driven more by its short-term tactical needs than
the truth.
The third player, India, has maintained uncharacteristic silence on the
new disclosures. An Indian foreign ministry spokesman told IPS that no
statement is due: "There is nothing in the pipeline." A year ago, by
contrast, New Delhi impounded a North Korean ship on suspicion that it was
carrying illicit nuclear and missile cargo.
All three players have their own priorities and compulsions. Pakistan is
keen to preserve its nuclear programme and its army's political
supremacy-at any cost. It is willing to sacrifice some nuclear scientists
by branding them culprits in the covert technology trade.
New Delhi is keen not to upset the peace process launched in January
after years of conflict with Pakistan. Privately, many Indian diplomats,
like strategic analysts, gloat over Pakistan's predicament. But they will
not go public.
They are aware that underscoring Pakistan's culpability in matters
nuclear could show India too in an uncomplimentary light: the world tends
to equate India and Pakistan in respect of nuclear weapons and Kashmir. A
Security Council resolution (No. 1172 of 1998) brackets the two while
condemning their tests. Like Pakistan, India does not want world attention
focused on its nuclear weapons.
However, it is abundantly clear that Khan's nuclear transfers could not
have occurred without the consent of Pakistan's security agencies,
controlled by the military, which closely guard its nuclear facilities and
personnel.
The army has exclusive, unambiguous control over Pakistan's nuclear
programme. No civilian leader has probably been allowed to enter
facilities like the Kahuta enrichment plant, barring Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a
former president trusted by the army. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto
has complained that she could never enter Kahuta.
Khan & Co could not have removed whole centrifuges from Kahuta and put
them into airplanes without the military's consent.
Similarly, Pakistan reportedly used C-130 aircraft to lift missile
components from North Korea. In August 2002, one such plane was
photographed by a satellite. All this would have needed the government's
approval.
Unlike the transfers of centrifuge designs to Iran and Libya, the deals
with North Korea seem like straightforward official barters. By the late
1980s, Pakistan had nuclear capability, but no missiles. To 'counter'
India, it procured Nodong and Taepodong from North Korea. Personal
corruption would seem to have been marginal in this transaction.
The ramifications of the clandestine network cut across continents, with
a factory making centrifuge components in Malaysia run by a Sri Lankan,
middlemen from Germany and Holland, and hardware shipments routed through
Dubai. Khan held meetings in Istanbul in Turkey and Casablanca in Morocco,
and chartered aircraft to different destinations.
His reported 'confessions' will reinforce International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed El Baradei's assessment, following disclosures
by Libya and Iran to the Agency, that "international export controls have
completely failed in recent years. A nuclear black market has emerged,
driven by fantastic cleverness ... Nuclear businessmen, unscrupulous firms
and perhaps also state bodies are involved. Libya and Iran made extensive
use of this network."
Khan was part of a gigantic illicit operation centred on the
proliferation of mass-destruction weapons technology. The least this
revelation demands is that the U.S government and Pakistan publish the list
of clandestine suppliers and middlemen in different countries so that they
can be prosecuted.
Equally important are legal prohibitions on trade in nuclear materials.
The existing IAEA framework is far too loose.
Huge quantities of weapons-grade fissile material routinely pass through
civilian nuclear facilities the world over. Plutonium, only five
kilogrammes of which is enough to make a Nagasaki-type bomb, is traded in
amounts such as tens of tonnes. There are large quantities of MUF (material
unaccounted-for) in the world's reprocessing facilities.
Above all, the world needs to devalue nuclear weapons as a currency of
power. It must get down to negotiating their complete elimination. Unless
the most powerful states summon up the will to disarm, they will not be
able to plug proliferation by smaller nations. (END/2004)
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