Author: Mansoor Ijaz
Publication: FOX News
Date:
URL: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,110688,00.html
The admission this week by Dr. Abdul
Qadeer Khan that he transferred Pakistan's nuclear technology to Iran,
North Korea and Libya is a watershed event in the history of global non-
proliferation efforts. Never has nuclear technology been shared on such
a wide scale by such a poor country with such potentially disastrous results.
And no one seemed to really care too much about the whole affair.
Brushed aside were the legal, political
and security ramifications of potential involvement by Pakistan's past
and present military and intelligence officials in the package deal - negotiated
behind closed doors - to close the controversy generated by Dr. Khan's
decades-long illegal actions. The deal essentially forced Dr. Khan to admit
his guilt alone and to exonerate any government officials, past or present,
in the transfer of nuclear centrifuge technology (to enable the creation
of enriched uranium), bomb designs or warhead components in exchange for
a full presidential pardon issued by Gen. Pervez Musharraf and approved
by his cabinet on Thursday.
Even more disturbing, however, was
the apparent "free-pass" issued by the Bush White House to Gen. Musharraf
in an attempt to keep his government alive and stable. The assumption made
was that had Dr. Khan opted to defend himself and his actions at a trial
for treason, he would have spilled the beans on everyone in government,
military and intelligence circles that was involved in the approval - explicit
or implicit - of the nuclear transfers. But the calculation that making
Dr. Khan the fall guy, thereby ending inquiry and bringing closure to this
nuclear scandal (because Musharraf is too valuable as an ally in the war
on terror to let his government collapse), makes the assumption that there
are no other countries or terrorist groups to which Pakistani nuclear assets
have been transferred.
Despite Pakistani denials and statements
to the contrary, this is far from certain.
The civilized world, led by an American
administration that has made unraveling terrorism's nerve centers its central
foreign policy goal, has a right to know whether or not other countries
or groups have received nuclear technologies and intellectual assistance
from Pakistan's rogue elements before Gen. Musharraf slams the door shut
on any independent auditing of his nuclear books. That he feels the matter
can be closed in such a cavalier manner is a slight to American taxpayers
who are funding his very survival, and to civilized people everywhere who
now have to wonder whether terrorists have the materials to not only build
radiological "dirty" bombs, but to build functional nuclear weapons that
can destroy the fabric of peace and humankind.
The Bush White House must be called
upon by the American people to compel our ally, Gen. Musharraf, to open
his records for independent verification and inspection so we can unravel
the nuclear black market before more dangerous transfers are made, and
to accept nuclear safeguards - like sensors, alarms, tamper-proof seals,
safekeeping vaults and closed-circuit cameras - that insure at least Pakistan's
nuclear materials are never again available for use by unauthorized parties.
To do otherwise would be to sew
the same seeds for an attack of incalculable consequences on American soil
by terrorists who received aid from an American ally - funded by American
taxpayer money while America's political leaders looked the other way.
It seems, at times, that we learned nothing from the lessons of the politicized
intelligence failures that led to the death, mayhem and destruction we
suffered on September 11, 2001.
Mansoor Ijaz is a Foreign Affairs
Analysit for FOX News Channel. Mansoor's father (deceased), Dr. Mujaddid
Ahmed Ijaz, was involved with the "Atoms for Peace" program for nuclear
cooperation between the United States and Pakistan in the 1960s, and was
present at the Pakistani conference where then-Prime Minister Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto asked his nuclear scientists to "build me the bomb." He taught
many of the students that went on to run sensitive parts of Pakistan's
nuclear program today.
