Nuclear Thread - 2

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The burial of Pak nuclear scandal</b>- By Brahma Chellaney

With global attention focused on the US-led face-off with Tehran over the nuclear issue, Pakistan has ingeniously seized the opportunity to give a quiet burial to the worst proliferation scandal in world history that involved the Pakistani transfer of nuclear know-how and equipment to three states — Iran, Libya and North Korea. Pakistan this week announced closure of the scandal-related case, as it freed from jail the last of the 11 nuclear scientists imprisoned more than two years ago for suspected role in the covert transfers. A 12th figure, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the ring’s alleged mastermind, was granted immunity from prosecution and has been made to stay at home under tight security since his February 2004 televised confession on illicit nuclear dealings.

Contrast the international crisis that is being contrived over Iran with the lack of any response to Pakistan’s defiant statement that, "As far we are concerned, this chapter is closed … there is a closure to that case." Contrast also Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s hawkish statements on Iran with his government’s conspicuous silence on Islamabad’s entombment of a proliferation scandal with far-reaching implications. And notice the dramatic irony that at the very time when Tehran is under pressure to come clean on its imports of Pakistani nuclear designs and items, the exporting country has announced closure of the probe into a scandal whose full international investigation can yield answers to several key unresolved issues relating to Iran cited by the International Atomic Energy Agency in its latest report last week.

No one till date has been charged, let alone put on trial, in Pakistan for involvement in a clandestine proliferation ring whose international-security ramifications exceed Iran’s enrichment of a minute amount of uranium so far. None of the actors in the scandal has been allowed by Pakistan to be questioned by the IAEA or any other outside investigators,<b> although Pakistani ruler General Pervez Musharraf has acknowledged the transfers of bomb know-how or complete uranium-enrichment centrifuges to Iran, North Korea and Libya in the period from1987 to 2003.</b>

In fact, the principal actors are not A.Q. Khan and his fellow scientists, but the Pakistan military and intelligence. It is to ensure that the role of the principal actors is not exposed that, first, the entire blame was pinned on a group of 12 "greedy" scientists led by Khan, and then these very men have been religiously kept away from international investigators. What’s more, the military — which has always controlled the nuclear programme — claimed that it wasn’t aware that nuclear secrets were being sold until Libya and Iran began spilling the beans. As part of Pakistan’s nukes-for-missiles swap with North Korea, a Pakistani C-130 military transport aircraft, for example, was photographed loading missile parts in Pyongyang in 2002. Yet Musharraf claimed he was in the dark.

No country has concocted a more ridiculous tale than Pakistan as an excuse for roguish conduct. The uncovering of the proliferation ring should have persuaded Islamabad’s western allies to distance themselves from the military and invest in the only real guarantee for Pakistan’s future as a stable, moderate state — its civil society. Instead, the Bush administration went along with Islamabad’s charade because it sees the Pakistan military as central to US strategic interests in that country. It even lent a helping hand to the Musharraf regime to dress up the pretence as reality.

Such is America’s ability to shape international perceptions that the world has been made to believe that A.Q. Khan, on his own, set up and ran a nuclear Wal-Mart. And that Khan’s network of "private entrepreneurs" was limited to less than a dozen Pakistani scientists, including his right-hand man, Mohammad Farooq, who has just been freed from incarceration. It was Libya, seeking to re-enter the international mainstream, that first disclosed the existence of the Pakistani proliferation ring, but the US took the credit by stage-managing an event in October 2003. With the help of documents Tripoli had turned over to Washington, a German cargo ship, BBC China, was intercepted en route to Libya with centrifuge components routed through Dubai.

The 21st century fable of an A.Q. Khan-run nuclear supermarket busted by the US has now become part of American nuclear folklore. Long before Khan turned from a national icon to a national scapegoat, he had been a favourite of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the period when Washington knew that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons but chose to ignore it. The US turned a

blind eye to the underground Pakistani bomb programme for the same reason that China aided Islamabad’s nuclear and missile ambitions. Not only did the CIA twice shield Khan from arrest in Europe, it also had a likely hand in the disappearance of Khan’s legal files from the Amsterdam court that convicted him, according to recent Dutch revelations.

As disclosed by former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers last August, the CIA protected Khan from arrest and prosecution in Europe in 1975 and 1986. The Dutch government did not take Khan into custody at the request of the CIA, which pretended that it wanted "to follow him." Khan was sentenced in absentia by Judge Anita Leeser in 1983 to four years in prison for stealing enrichment secrets from the Netherlands on the basis of which Pakistan’s Kahuta plant had by then been set up. After the conviction was overturned on a technicality, US intelligence may have influenced the Dutch decision not to bring new charges against Khan, whose case files, according to Judge Leeser, disappeared "on purpose."

Now, karmic justice has caught up with Khan, as it has with another onetime CIA favourite, Saddam Hussein. After having been assisted for years by the CIA, Khan has become the butt of US vilification. In the good old days, the CIA may have even used him and its high-level friends in the Pakistan military and intelligence to help entrap Iran in a violation of its NPT obligations. Consecutive IAEA reports have harped on the Iranian refusal to hand over a 1987 document from the Pakistani ring offering to supply "drawings, specifications and calculations" for an enrichment facility, along with "materials for 2,000 centrifuge machines" and data on "uranium re-conversion and casting capabilities." To "understand the full scope of the offer made by the network in 1987," the IAEA is also seeking a copy of a second 15-page document.

More broadly, the US should have foreseen the consequences of its action in winking at Pakistan’s covert nuclear programme. It is well documented how the Pakistan military helped build nuclear weapons with materials and equipment illegally procured from overseas through intermediaries in Dubai and front companies set up in Europe by the Inter-Services Intelligence. What could not be procured from the West was imported covertly from ally China. With the ISI as the spearhead of operations and Khan as the brain, the military ran the world’s most successful nuclear-smuggling ring. That success only bred proliferation in the reverse direction — out of Pakistan.

There is a long history to Pakistan’s nuclear mendacity, aided by America’s pursuit of politically expedient foreign-policy goals. By whitewashing Islamabad’s official complicity in the sale of nuclear secrets, the US can only spur more rogue proliferation in the future. Today, despite a military quagmire in Iraq and instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US is itching to fashion a continuous arc of volatility between Israel and India by taking on Iran. The White House openly seeks to foment regime change in Tehran while simultaneously pursuing coercive diplomacy, backed by the tacit threat of military strikes.

Compare the Bush team’s leniency towards Pakistan with its belligerence against Iran. The draft UN Security Council resolution circulated by America’s allies would strip Iran of its legal rights under the NPT by ordering it to cease all IAEA-safeguarded enrichment and reprocessing activities, including research and development and the construction of a heavy-water reactor. In contrast, Washington and its three Tehran-bashing friends — Britain, France and Germany — have said nothing on the Musharraf regime’s use of the downward spiral on Iran to release the last remaining scientist from preventive custody and cheekily announce that the proliferation case is over, with no further investigation planned or required.

The logic of America’s indulgence towards Pakistan is hard for its own public to grasp. As the Washington Post editorially said some time ago, "the administration must confront the reality that Pakistan’s military leadership has done more to threaten US and global security with weapons of mass destruction than either Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein." Bush invaded Iraq to eliminate WMDs that were not there but has allowed Pakistan, with real WMDs and Al Qaeda sanctuaries, to escape international censure for its egregious nuclear transfers to three states.

The IAEA demands additional documentation or data from Iran regarding its P-1 and P-2 centrifuges (with "P" standing for Pakistan). But a good way to get round Tehran’s reluctance to share full information is for Washington and its gang of Iran bashers to facilitate IAEA investigations into the Pakistani ring. Key outstanding issues on Iran can be readily settled if the IAEA were permitted to do the obvious — probe the front part of the supply line in the country where it originated. Yet the US-backed Musharraf regime this week again rejected that idea, declaring, "There is no question of direct access."

<b>A puzzling question is why the Indian PM has embraced the same double standards. How are India’s interests aided by the PM’s strident tone on Iran and reluctance to say a word on either Pakistani proliferation or the need for democracy in Pakistan? Should he allow Washington to dictate India’s silence on Musharraf’s closure of the proliferation case?</b>

In recent weeks, the PM has repeatedly claimed in the context of Iran that, "We <b>are very clear we do not want another nuclear-weapons state in our neighbourhood." Can’t a nuclear Shia Iran serve as a counterweight to a Talibanised, nuclear-armed, Sunni Pakistan? With what moral or legal authority can India oppose a nuclear Iran? </b>If Tehran wished to lawfully develop nuclear weapons, it could exercise its right to withdraw from the NPT and kick out IAEA inspectors — the route North Korea chose. That is exactly what coercive action against Iran will invite.

The PM’s line, more importantly, begs a fundamental question: how has he reached a conclusion that the IAEA has yet to arrive at — that Iran has a nuclear-weapons programme? A real Iranian weapons programme is unlikely as long as the IAEA is carrying out invasive inspections, as it has been doing ever since it discovered undeclared Iranian nuclear activity. By linking Iran again and again with nuclear-weapons development, isn’t the PM lending legitimacy to the US-led campaign against Iran? In fact, it was India’s critical vote against Iran at the IAEA governing board last September and February and refusal at Vienna to link the Iran case with the Pakistani proliferation ring that have helped set the stage for the present confrontation.

Having helped send the Iran matter from the IAEA governing board (of which India is a permanent member) to an institution where India has no role to play — the Security Council — the PM marginalised India’s role in order to aid the anti-Tehran drive and open Iran to potential sanctions and military strikes.<b> If the Third Bush War breaks out, the White House could thank Manmohan Singh for his unspoken contribution</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->