Endangered

By: K Subrahmanyam
The Tribune Friday, Aug 26, 2005

The General has not explained what was the quid pro quo Dr Khan received from the North Koreans

General Musharraf has now disclosed for the first time that Dr A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who confessed to having proliferated to Iran and Libya also provided centrifuge technology to enrich uranium to North Korea. He has done this in an interview to the Japanese Kyodo News Agency and in reply to a specific question whether Islamabad had earlier given this information to Tokyo. Presumably, Pakistan thought it necessary to part with this information since Japan is its biggest aid donor and is one of the five members involved in discussing the North Korean proliferation in the six-nation dialogue involving the US, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and North Korea. Even while making this admission on Dr A. Q. Khan’s clandestine transactions with North Korea, the General has for the first time also made the disclosure that Dr A. Q. Khan’s contribution to the Pakistani bomb was very restricted. It was only to provide enriched uranium. All other steps such as providing uranium hexafluoride gas for the centrifuges, making triggering mechanism etc were not done by Dr Khan. It was widely known in Pakistan that Dr Khan was not allowed to conduct the Chagai tests and it was Dr Samar Mubarak Mund of the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission who carried out the test. It is possible that through this disclosure President Musharraf is initiating a process of denigrating Dr Khan and telling Pakistani people that Dr Khan was not the father of the Pakistani bomb. Then why was he made so much of? Even while granting pardon to him, General Musharraf said that one of the considerations was Dr Khan was venerated in the country as the “father of the bomb”. While Dr Khan was not a great scientist and his contribution to the Pakistani bomb was limited, he was crucial to the Pakistani bomb effort since he ran what the IAEA chief, Dr Elbaradi, called a black-market nuclear Walmart in collaboration with various Western European companies dealing with nuclear technology, the Chinese and the North Koreans. It was his ability to be a sales agent for the black-marketing Western European companies and the Chinese that made him invaluable to the Pakistani Army, which was in overall charge of the nuclear and missile programme. Dr Khan’s self-promotion and his self-glorification as the father of the bomb were tolerated by others. Even at this stage, General Musharraf is not telling the whole truth. While he highlights that Dr Khan could not have provided a full range of bomb-making technology, he forgets that in the shipment of Dr Khan to Libya the Chinese blueprint of the bomb was recovered. If Dr Khan’s expertise was limited to making enriched uranium, how did he come in possession of Chinese bomb blueprints and was in a position to ship it to Libya? Nor does the General explain what was the quid pro quo Dr Khan received from the North Koreans, if the Pakistani Government had paid for in full for all that it bought. Again, Dr Khan, in his confession accepting responsibility of proliferation, justified it on the ground that he was discharging his Islamic obligation. Then what induced Dr Khan to supply the centrifuge equipment and parts to North Korea? Surely, not loyalty to Islam. We have to await a further instalment of disclosures from President Musharraf. The recent disclosures of the former Dutch Prime Minister bring out the CIA’s interest in Dr Khan going back to 1985 and 1975 when it intervened with the Dutch law enforcement agencies to save Dr Khan from prosecution. There is today adequate evidence to prove that Dr Khan’s proliferation activities were known to the CIA from mid-1970s onwards. Yet another CIA officer has disclosed that the US authorities knew about Saudi Arabian financing of the Pakistan bomb. The Senate Committee headed by Senator Jack Kevy brought out in its report about the CIA withholding cooperation in respect of proliferation involving Iran. In the light of these developments, both General Musharraf and the US Administration itself have problems in exposing Dr Khan completely, lest he should in turn reveal his services to the Pakistan Army and his long-term connections with the CIA. Dr Khan is reported to be suffering from serious cardiac problems. Therefore, some of these disclosures may be in anticipation of Dr Khan’s demise and burgeoning the Khan proliferation problem without too much damage to the Pakistani Army and the CIA. These disclosures by General Musharraf come at the most inconvenient moment for the American nonproliferation Ayotallahs. Next month the US Congress is to have hearings about President Bush’s new proposals to extend to India civil nuclear technology, lifting the sanctions imposed on it in 1974. The justification of President Bush is that India was a responsible power with advanced nuclear technology. The proliferation Ayotallahs in Washington argue that such a concession to India should also be extended to Pakistan. General Musharraf’s disclosures would prove that Pakistani has not been a responsible nuclear power which is the basic criterion to justify President Bush’s decision in respect of India. Pakistan has to justify US nuclear transactions with two rogue regimes as the Americans call Iran and North Korea. This disclosure of General Musharraf will be a powerful weapon in the hands of the Bush Administration to reject the Ayotallahs of non proliferation.

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