WASHINGTON, 9 February 2004 — The United States will neither sanction Pakistan for pardoning the top scientist who passed nuclear bomb technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, nor demand an independent investigation of the Pakistani military’s suspected role in aiding the transfers, according to US officials.
That’s because the Bush administration wants Pakistani cooperation in pursuing at least two larger strategic interests: Tracking down and halting the shadowy international procurement ring that has been peddling nuclear bomb technology, and rooting out Al-Qaeda and Taleban networks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Our goal is not to denounce people, our goal is not to jail people, our goal is to get results,’’ said a senior administration official. “If we can help that happen by leaving it to (Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf) and not trying to dictate from Washington what he has to do, then that’s what we’re going to do.’’
‘’It’s just another case where you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,’’ the official added. “And there’s a lot of flies to be caught in Pakistan.’’
But some analysts say the administration decision to handle Musharraf with kid gloves could have unintended and possibly dangerous consequences.
Several analysts said the implicit US stance is that the war on terrorism trumps the goal of nonproliferation, and that sends the wrong message to other nuclear aspirants. Some also argued that acquiescing to Musharraf’s decision to pardon the nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, poses a moral hazard for an administration that toppled Saddam Hussein because of alleged offenses involving weapons of mass destruction that were arguably less severe than Khan’s.
But Pakistan experts agreed that Washington fears pushing Musharraf too hard in public to crack down on Khan, the revered creator of the ‘’Islamic bomb,” could loosen the Pakistani general’s fragile hold on power. The administration’s nightmare is that Musharraf will fall and a nuclear-armed fundamentalist government will follow.
‘’There’s a strong belief here in Washington that Musharraf is the only thing that stands between us and chaos,” said Stephen Cohen, a Pakistan specialist at the Brookings Institution. Nevertheless, Cohen said: ‘’Pakistan could be our biggest foreign policy problem, because it’s an Iraq with nuclear weapons. The government may not be as brutal, but it is as dangerous.”
Musharraf announced Thursday that he would pardon Khan, and insisted that the scientist and associates in Pakistan’s nuclear laboratories had acted alone. ‘’The reality is that the government is not involved and that the military is not involved,” Musharraf said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Musharraf had given assurances that the Pakistani government was not involved in any kind of proliferation. ‘’We value those assurances and his actions since he made (them) demonstrate his commitment,” McClellan said Thursday.
But the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed El-Baradei, took a contrary view, saying that Khan was not working alone and calling him ‘’the tip of an iceberg.”
The Bush administration is right to put cracking the global proliferation network ahead of punishing Pakistan, said Henry Sokolski, the conservative head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. But claims that the Pakistani government was not involved in the nuclear transfers are ‘’absurd” and the Bush administration should say so, Sokolski said.
‘’We found (nuclear) weapons designs in Libya. ... Khan didn’t have access to those,” but the Pakistani military did, Sokolski said.
Moreover, Pakistani military jets reportedly ferried bulky centrifuges used to enrich uranium to North Korea. Administration critics say such evidence calls into question the reliability of the Pakistani military as the vaunted ally of the United States in the war against terrorism.
Khan’s escape from punishment sat poorly with those who support the Bush administration’s emphasis on cracking down on proliferators.
‘’I can’t think of any (one) who deserves less to be pardoned than A.Q. Khan,” said David Kay, the former Bush administration chief weapons hunter in Iraq.
‘’These guys aren’t even suffering the penalties you would get from smuggling marijuana,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who charged the Bush administration with using a double standard for US friend Pakistan and foes Iraq and North Korea.
‘’It’s terrible that North Korea would export Scud (missile) technology, but it’s a forgivable offense if Pakistan exports nuclear bomb technology to half the developing world.”
Musharraf also incensed international critics Thursday by chastising Libya and Iran for cooperating with the IAEA, thus exposing Pakistan as their crucial nuclear supplier.
‘’Muslim brothers did not ask us before giving our names,” Musharraf said.
