02-06-2004, 05:50 AM
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#19 (permalink)
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Dubya
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The President's attitude toward Pakistan makes us safer?
Quote:
THE ATTEMPT by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to whitewash his country's marketing of nuclear weapons technology to rogue dictatorships and sponsors of terrorism comes as no surprise. The general and his government have been lying for years about the illegal traffic. Now that their cover has been blown by evidence supplied to the United Nations by Libya and Iran, they are attempting to pin all the blame on a single scientist while stonewalling any international investigation. On Wednesday Abdul Qadeer Khan, the chief designer of Pakistan's atomic weapons, confessed on television to selling his work through an international black market and claimed he acted alone -- contradicting his previous implication of Mr. Musharraf and other top generals. Yesterday Mr. Musharraf duly pardoned him, called him a hero and declared that Pakistan would not supply documentation to the International Atomic Energy Agency or admit its investigators.
Such belligerence could be expected from a military ruler. What's hard to believe is the Bush administration's reaction to it. Rather than moving to impose sanctions on Pakistan -- action that might be expected for a government that has been caught providing the technology for nuclear weapons to such countries as Iran, Libya and North Korea -- it has swallowed his coverup and even congratulated him on it. "We value the commitments Mr. Musharraf has made to prevent the expertise in Pakistan from reaching other places," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday. "We think that Pakistan is taking serious efforts to end the activities of a dangerous network." As for the pardon of Mr. Khan -- who by Pakistan's account is probably the worst criminal in the history of nuclear weapons proliferation -- "I don't think it's a matter for the United States to sit in judgment on," Mr. Boucher said.
President Bush has said since Sept. 11, 2001, that his first mission as president is to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and the regimes that sponsor them. His national security doctrine declares that even preemptive military action is justified in order to stop it. Yet now that Pakistan's regime has been caught making such transfers, his administration is seemingly prepared to accept its implausible alibi, allow the very generals who oversaw the traffic to investigate it, and trust that they won't do it again. There's no need for U.S. or U.N. action, suggests Mr. Boucher: "What penalties, sanctions, controls or steps are used to prevent it from happening again, those are up for individual governments to decide," he said. "It's up to the Pakistani government to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again." Iran and North Korea, which are facing U.S. demands for intrusive international inspections and the threat of a referral to the U.N. Security Council, may take comfort from those words.
The administration's dilemma is that it has banked its policy toward Pakistan on its relationship with Mr. Musharraf, who has been showered with aid and praise in exchange for half-measures against terrorism and promises about stopping proliferation. Perhaps there is no alternative to a relationship with the general. But that relationship cannot be the only defense against further delivery of Pakistan's nuclear weapons technology to enemies of the United States. Mr. Bush should insist that Pakistan supply the details of its trafficking to the IAEA and allow outside monitoring of its programs. Stopping Pakistan's proliferation is vital to U.S. security. It cannot be left to Mr. Musharraf to decide how or whether it will be done.
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