01-03-2004, 01:29 AM
January 2, 2004
COMMENTARY
<b>Pakistan Plays Nuclear Footsie; Does Anyone Care?</b>
By GOPALASWAMI PARTHASARATHY
Writing his memoirs in his prison cell just before he was executed by General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto stated that his aim as prime minister of Pakistan had been to put the "Islamic Civilization" at par with the "Christian, Jewish and Hindu Civilizations," by giving the Islamic world a "full nuclear capability." In a meeting of top scientists and advisers that he had convened on Jan. 20, 1972, just after assuming office, Bhutto made it clear that he was determined to achieve nuclear capability, not merely to neutralize India's inherent conventional superiority, but also to make his country a leader of the Islamic world.
But how was a cash-strapped Pakistan to get the financial resources to achieve these objectives? Bhutto's press adviser, Khalid Hasan, has since revealed how Bhutto sought and obtained financial assistance from Saudi Arabia and the mercurial Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to fulfill his ambitions. Bhutto also indicated in his prison memoirs that China under Mao's leadership had agreed to provide Pakistan the necessary assistance to build the bomb. Despite changes in leadership in China, there has been no dilution of its nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan.
While successive rulers in Pakistan have vowed that they would not transfer nuclear technology to others, the IAEA has come up with evidence indicating that both Libya and Iran received assistance in developing uranium enrichment capabilities from Pakistan. Col. Gadhafi had such a close relationship with Bhutto that the latter named the largest cricket stadium in Pakistan the "Gadhafi Stadium." Funds from Libya flowed freely to Pakistan "in suitcases," to fuel its nuclear ambitions. What is even more interesting is that the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran is said to have commenced in 1987, when Pakistan was professing to be a close U.S. ally. Pakistan was then under the rule of Gen. Zia. The entire nuclear program was then, as it is now, under the direct control of the Pakistan army. There is no way that there could have been any "rogue operation" by individual scientists to transfer nuclear technology to Iran, without the knowledge and consent of the Pakistan army.
While Iran and Libya have agreed to comprehensive IAEA inspections of their nuclear facilities under international pressure, there has been little or no attention paid to the nexus between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on nuclear issues. Apart from the revelations of Khalid Hassan about Saudi funding of the Pakistan nuclear program, Mohammed al Khilawi, the senior Saudi diplomat who defected to the U.S. in 1994, has also given details about how Riyadh bankrolled Pakistan and then Iraq to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities.
More recently, eyebrows were raised when the Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan was provided unprecedented access to Pakistan's nuclear enrichment facilities in Kahuta in March 1999. During this visit he invited Dr. A.Q. Khan, the "Father of the Islamic Bomb" to visit Saudi Arabia. Dr. Khan had paid over a dozen visits to North Korea and was instrumental in the transfer of enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for North Korean missiles. Weapons inspectors in Iraq have traced Iraqi documents showing that Dr. Khan had offered nuclear technology to the Saddam Hussein regime. Dr. Khan's associates, Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood and Abdul Majid visited Kandahar for a quiet pow-wow on nuclear technology with Osama bin Laden. And more recently, Dr. Khan has been questioned for his involvement in the transfer of enrichment capabilities to Iran. He obviously did not visit Saudi Arabia at the personal invitation of its defense minister to discuss Islamic theology!
While Saudi Arabia actively uses "charities" to promote Wahhabi extremism across the world, Pakistan has been the recipient of huge direct economic assistance from the desert kingdom. The Saudis have bailed out Islamabad over the past decade by supplying Pakistan with an estimated $ 1.2 billion of oil products annually, virtually free of cost. Just after the visit of Dr. Khan to Saudi Arabia in November 1999, a Saudi nuclear expert, Dr. Al Arfaj, stated at a seminar that "Saudi Arabia must make plans aimed at making a quick response to face the possibilities of nuclear warfare agents being used against the Saudi population, cities or armed forces." After the departure of American forces from its soil, how does Saudi Arabia propose to deal with such nuclear contingencies? The 2,700-kilometer range CSS-2 missiles that Saudi Arabia obtained from China in 1987 are useless if fitted only with conventional warheads. One cannot, therefore, avoid the inference that like the Pakistan-North Korean nukes for missiles deal, there is an "oil for nukes" deal between the Saudis and Pakistanis.
Washington's response to these developments has been strange. When Mr. Al Khilawi made his revelations about Saudi nuclear ambitions in 1994, a senior official in the Clinton White House remarked: "Can you imagine what would happen if we discovered Saudi had a bomb? We would have to do something and nobody wants that. Best not to ask tough questions in the first place." We are now told that Colin Powell is fully satisfied with General Pervez Musharraf's assurances that the nuclear transfers to North Korea and Iran were done by individual scientists, before he assumed office. If this is indeed true then what is one to make of reports that during a visit of a three-member team of its scientists to Pyongyang in 2001, Pakistan shared data of its nuclear tests with the North Koreans?
In July 2002, U.S. satellites took pictures of C-130 aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force picking up missile components from North Korea. Around the same time, a Pakistani "Shaheen Airlines" aircraft is reported to have transported 47 tons of special aluminum acquired from the U.K. by the Kahuta Research Laboratories established by Dr. Khan, to Pyongyang for its enrichment program. The Clinton administration sought to appease China by pretending that it could not make a "determination" about that country's missile and nuclear transfers to Pakistan. The Bush administration would be ill advised to follow this example.
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Mr. Parthasarathy, a visiting professor at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, is a former Indian ambassador to Pakistan.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1073002...9911800,00.html
COMMENTARY
<b>Pakistan Plays Nuclear Footsie; Does Anyone Care?</b>
By GOPALASWAMI PARTHASARATHY
Writing his memoirs in his prison cell just before he was executed by General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto stated that his aim as prime minister of Pakistan had been to put the "Islamic Civilization" at par with the "Christian, Jewish and Hindu Civilizations," by giving the Islamic world a "full nuclear capability." In a meeting of top scientists and advisers that he had convened on Jan. 20, 1972, just after assuming office, Bhutto made it clear that he was determined to achieve nuclear capability, not merely to neutralize India's inherent conventional superiority, but also to make his country a leader of the Islamic world.
But how was a cash-strapped Pakistan to get the financial resources to achieve these objectives? Bhutto's press adviser, Khalid Hasan, has since revealed how Bhutto sought and obtained financial assistance from Saudi Arabia and the mercurial Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to fulfill his ambitions. Bhutto also indicated in his prison memoirs that China under Mao's leadership had agreed to provide Pakistan the necessary assistance to build the bomb. Despite changes in leadership in China, there has been no dilution of its nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan.
While successive rulers in Pakistan have vowed that they would not transfer nuclear technology to others, the IAEA has come up with evidence indicating that both Libya and Iran received assistance in developing uranium enrichment capabilities from Pakistan. Col. Gadhafi had such a close relationship with Bhutto that the latter named the largest cricket stadium in Pakistan the "Gadhafi Stadium." Funds from Libya flowed freely to Pakistan "in suitcases," to fuel its nuclear ambitions. What is even more interesting is that the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran is said to have commenced in 1987, when Pakistan was professing to be a close U.S. ally. Pakistan was then under the rule of Gen. Zia. The entire nuclear program was then, as it is now, under the direct control of the Pakistan army. There is no way that there could have been any "rogue operation" by individual scientists to transfer nuclear technology to Iran, without the knowledge and consent of the Pakistan army.
While Iran and Libya have agreed to comprehensive IAEA inspections of their nuclear facilities under international pressure, there has been little or no attention paid to the nexus between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on nuclear issues. Apart from the revelations of Khalid Hassan about Saudi funding of the Pakistan nuclear program, Mohammed al Khilawi, the senior Saudi diplomat who defected to the U.S. in 1994, has also given details about how Riyadh bankrolled Pakistan and then Iraq to obtain nuclear weapons capabilities.
More recently, eyebrows were raised when the Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan was provided unprecedented access to Pakistan's nuclear enrichment facilities in Kahuta in March 1999. During this visit he invited Dr. A.Q. Khan, the "Father of the Islamic Bomb" to visit Saudi Arabia. Dr. Khan had paid over a dozen visits to North Korea and was instrumental in the transfer of enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for North Korean missiles. Weapons inspectors in Iraq have traced Iraqi documents showing that Dr. Khan had offered nuclear technology to the Saddam Hussein regime. Dr. Khan's associates, Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood and Abdul Majid visited Kandahar for a quiet pow-wow on nuclear technology with Osama bin Laden. And more recently, Dr. Khan has been questioned for his involvement in the transfer of enrichment capabilities to Iran. He obviously did not visit Saudi Arabia at the personal invitation of its defense minister to discuss Islamic theology!
While Saudi Arabia actively uses "charities" to promote Wahhabi extremism across the world, Pakistan has been the recipient of huge direct economic assistance from the desert kingdom. The Saudis have bailed out Islamabad over the past decade by supplying Pakistan with an estimated $ 1.2 billion of oil products annually, virtually free of cost. Just after the visit of Dr. Khan to Saudi Arabia in November 1999, a Saudi nuclear expert, Dr. Al Arfaj, stated at a seminar that "Saudi Arabia must make plans aimed at making a quick response to face the possibilities of nuclear warfare agents being used against the Saudi population, cities or armed forces." After the departure of American forces from its soil, how does Saudi Arabia propose to deal with such nuclear contingencies? The 2,700-kilometer range CSS-2 missiles that Saudi Arabia obtained from China in 1987 are useless if fitted only with conventional warheads. One cannot, therefore, avoid the inference that like the Pakistan-North Korean nukes for missiles deal, there is an "oil for nukes" deal between the Saudis and Pakistanis.
Washington's response to these developments has been strange. When Mr. Al Khilawi made his revelations about Saudi nuclear ambitions in 1994, a senior official in the Clinton White House remarked: "Can you imagine what would happen if we discovered Saudi had a bomb? We would have to do something and nobody wants that. Best not to ask tough questions in the first place." We are now told that Colin Powell is fully satisfied with General Pervez Musharraf's assurances that the nuclear transfers to North Korea and Iran were done by individual scientists, before he assumed office. If this is indeed true then what is one to make of reports that during a visit of a three-member team of its scientists to Pyongyang in 2001, Pakistan shared data of its nuclear tests with the North Koreans?
In July 2002, U.S. satellites took pictures of C-130 aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force picking up missile components from North Korea. Around the same time, a Pakistani "Shaheen Airlines" aircraft is reported to have transported 47 tons of special aluminum acquired from the U.K. by the Kahuta Research Laboratories established by Dr. Khan, to Pyongyang for its enrichment program. The Clinton administration sought to appease China by pretending that it could not make a "determination" about that country's missile and nuclear transfers to Pakistan. The Bush administration would be ill advised to follow this example.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Parthasarathy, a visiting professor at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, is a former Indian ambassador to Pakistan.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1073002...9911800,00.html