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POLITICS-PAKISTAN: String of Visits Reflects Concern on Nukes

Commentary - By M B Naqvi

KARACHI, Pakistan, Mar 5 2004 (IPS) - The way foreign ministers and their deputies are descending on the Pakistani capital in some ways resembles the simultaneous trips by western officials to Iran in past months – visits that led to Iran’s allowing visits by international nuclear inspectors.

The way foreign ministers and their deputies are descending on the Pakistani capital in some ways resembles the simultaneous trips by western officials to Iran in past months – visits that led to Iran’s allowing visits by international nuclear inspectors.

It was after a string of visits to Tehran by the British, German, and French foreign ministers, along with the European Union’s commissioner for foreign affairs, that the Iranian government signed the additional protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and permitted unannounced on-site inspections by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran’s traditional truculence gave way to satisfactory cooperation with the U.N. agency, IAEA.

Meantime, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepen has just spent three days in Pakistan. Now British Foreign Minister Jack Straw is devoting three days to Islamabad. Also in the Pakistani capital is a senior German diplomat, apparently reviewing bilateral relations and co-chairing the Pakistan-German Joint Commission.

Senior U.S. officials’ visits to Islamabad are no news – officials of the two allied countries are in any case working in close mesh in the ‘war on terror’.

But still, many are wondering what is cooking amid the confidential visit by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet û one that did not remain secret û and U.S. Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid’s spending some time with Pakistan’s decision makers.

These had as much significance as the visits of special high-level emissaries of European major powers.

Immediate background is sure to put these visits in perspective: There is the ‘Spring Offensive’ being planned by the United States to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and ferret out other al-Qaeda and top Taliban leaders on either side of the long Pakistan-Afghan border.

Secondly, there has been l’affair Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan in Pakistan. His admission of selling nuclear know-how and technology shocked many and highlighted a flourishing international black market in nuclear weapons.

The third element is the vigorous pursuit by the United States of the Proliferation Security Initiative. This has been given a special salience amid the role that Pakistani nuclear scientists play in the proliferation of the nuclear contraband. Pakistan’s President Gen Pervez Musharraf moved quickly by obtaining a confession from Dr Khan of masterminding all proliferation operations to sell Pakistan’s atomic knowledge and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Musharraf granted him a presidential pardon immediately after. Many looked askance at this and a virtually non-stop flow of stories in U.S. media has underlined the world’s suspicions of higher-level involvement in the affair.

The pardon of Khan has been questioned in U.S. congressional circles as well and its media is hungry for more investigations and some sort of punitive action.

As it happens, this is the U.S. election year and the Bush Administration wants to wind up at least the Afghan operations by capturing or killing Osama bin Laden û hence the planned May-June operation on both sides of the mountainous Pakistan-Afghan border.

The U.S. government apparently wants to take the lead role in the matter and perhaps on either side of the border. There are widespread fears in the United States that bin Laden’s capture would require a big effort by U.S. normal as well as Special Forces.

Pakistan’s reaction so far has been a flat denial of the cascading stories in the U.S. media that Pakistan’s political authorities, whether civil or military, were ever involved in the nuclear proliferation. Islamabad says that whatever has happened was the individual enterprise of Khan and his subordinates.

The Pakistan government’s stance is two-fold and it has been repeated ad nauseam: One, Pakistan will never cap and roll back its minimum nuclear deterrent and two, there are no U.S. troops on Pakistan soil and none are welcome come spring.

These statements are designed to reassure Pakistan’s religious right, which suspects that Musharraf will buckle under relentless U.S. pressure and retreat on both issues.

There can be no doubt about the high priority that all the western countries attach to non-proliferation of atomic weaponry. All European major powers, the so-called ‘Old Europe’, are closely cooperating with the U.S. government. This was evident in Iranian and Libyan cases. It cannot but be sure that the same will apply, in an appropriate way, to Pakistan.

But the issue has ambiguities. Pakistan is an important U.S. ally in its ‘war on terror’. The public stance of the U.S. government is that Pakistan’s help has been invaluable, since more than 500 al-Qaeda operatives have been arrested by Pakistan and handed over to the U.S. government.

Pakistan’s cooperation will be vital to the success of the planned Spring Offensive. The U.S. government cannot afford to publicly distrust Pakistan in view of the quest for bin Laden and to crush the still-growing Taliban resistance, despite critical reports in U.S. media. Other circumstances relate to what Khan was doing. New questions with regard to Pakistan would however arise: after all, Pakistan’s nuclear programme did leak, and proliferation happened.

Pakistan has long been assuring that its control and command system is foolproof and that there is no question of its nuclear ‘‘assets’‘ falling into terrorist hands or leaking to anti-U.S. states. Now that has happened and its command and control system has been proven to have leaked. Won’t the U.S. government and others suggest new safeguards?

At one level, the U.S. government has been strongly working for the adoption of Nuclear Confidence Building measures, known as Nuclear Restraint Regime, by both India and Pakistan in the U.S.-assisted efforts to peacefully resolve their differences.

At another level, the U.S. government has offered to modernise Pakistan’s Control and Command System by selling new technology and advice.

It is here that Pakistan’s religious right smells a rat: U.S. ideas of new safeguards apparently include one about ‘Joint Control’. This is seen by Pakistan’s mullahs and other supporters of Pakistan’s nuclear programme to be the thin end of the wedge that will result in the capping and rolling back of the whole deterrent they say these weapons boost.

Much of this fear may be pointless because Washington needs the Pakistan government’s willing cooperation to arrest or kill bin Laden and to safeguard Hamid Karzai’s regime in Afghanistan by Pakistan’s tighter control of the Taliban.

As for Musharraf and his regime, they have firmly reiterated their intent both to keep Pakistan’s nuclear weapons free of outside control or even gaze — and to bar the presence of U.S. soldiers on Pakistani soil. This should ease domestic disquiet, though it may generate new international worries.