Squeezing a nuclear outlaw

September 30, 2004

The hunt for Osama bin Laden was Topic 1 last week when Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf met with President Bush at the White House. The two leaders discussed other things, including Musharraf's efforts to retain his post as chief of the army. But apparently one thing that failed to rank high on the agenda was the threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons.

To be specific, Bush reportedly didn't even try to persuade Musharraf to allow U.S. or International Atomic Energy Agency officials a crack at interviewing Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of Pakistan's nuclear program and one of the world's most brazen nuclear profiteers.

Earlier this year, Khan's underground nuclear bazaar--dubbed the "nuclear Wal-Mart" by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei--was uncloaked, solving the mystery of how North Korea, Iran and Libya acquired so much nuclear technology so fast. The answer: Khan's network sold it to them.

Khan, revered in his homeland as the father of the Pakistan bomb, confessed and was instantly pardoned by Musharraf. The Pakistan president apparently feared that his grip on power could be undermined by a long investigation and trial of a national hero. Musharraf insisted that Khan acted without government knowledge, a claim that is difficult if not impossible to believe.

At the time of Khan's confession, ElBaradei raised alarms, saying Khan was "the tip of an iceberg" in an illicit nuclear supply network with connections in many countries. "We need to know who supplied what, when, to whom," ElBaradei said.

Some eight months later, though, no one has those answers because Pakistan has refused to make Khan available to outside investigators, either from the U.S. or the IAEA. The United States, fearing that more pressure could destabilize a crucial ally in the war on terror, hasn't pressed the case.

That is a colossal mistake that could have devastating repercussions. Some American intelligence officials reportedly suspect that Pakistan is withholding information that may be embarrassing or that it is no longer pushing Khan to spill all his secrets. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Musharraf asserted that the United States had never asked to question Khan. If that's true, the reason is transparent: They knew the request would be rejected. Musharraf said as much. If American officials had asked, he said, "we wouldn't let them," because "that would show a lack of trust in ourselves. I mean, we must trust our own agencies."

But how much trust can the U.S. and the rest of the world have in a regime that so quickly pardons a nuclear outlaw? How much trust can there be for a regime that denies any of its officials--even in its most powerful institution, the army--knew anything about Khan's dealings?

The world may never know exactly who bought from Khan's network. And that is intolerable.

Musharraf said he was certain that Khan's network had been shut down. But Musharraf also admitted that he could not be sure that Pakistani investigators had unearthed all the customers and transactions of the network stretching back probably over a decade or more. David Albright, a former IAEA weapons inspector, says Pakistan may not push Khan too hard because that could expose the illicit networks that the country still uses to buy nuclear technology.

Iran is threatening to go nuclear. North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program. Both were fed by Khan's network. Either of those countries could potentially become a source of nuclear materials or weapons for Al Qaeda, which has declared its intent to acquire and use nuclear weapons. And others may be harboring nuclear ambitions. In July, the Associated Press reported Syria and Saudi Arabia were being investigated as possible Khan network clients.

If the world is to avert more nasty surprises, the Khan network must be fully exposed and completely unraveled.

Bush can't let Musharraf off the hook. International authorities need to know everything Khan knows. Without direct access to Khan, the world can have little confidence that his entire network is being rolled up, that black marketers across the world are being arrested and brought to justice. In many ways, that's as crucial to the war on terror as finding bin Laden.