In March 2004 the then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, had declared in Delhi at the start of his South Asian visit that the Pakistan-led nuclear proliferation network had to be ‘completely rooted out’. While praising the Pakistani dictator, Gen Pervez Musharraf for being ‘as determined as we (the US) are’ in meeting that goal, Powell had added: ‘But we cannot be satisfied until the entire network is gone, branch and root.’ He had, incidentally, also patted Pakistan for what he said was a decline in militant’s infiltration into India and assured Delhi that ‘we will be watching that it stays that way.’

Since then neither has the Pakistan-led nuclear proliferation network been smashed ‘branch and root’, nor, for that matter, has infiltration of militants really declined to any significant level. A ‘leaked’ western intelligence report on secret proliferation activities of ‘rogue’ states says that in company with Iran and Syria, Pakistan has been secretly engaged in operating a clandestine network of nuclear trade in western Europe with the twin aim of developing an Iranian nuclear bomb and Pakistan’s and Syria’s nuclear weapons and rocket programmes.

Right under the ‘hawk’ eyes of the US and all the proliferation Ayatollahs in the west, Pakistan and the other ‘rogue’ states have been running with the help of their governments and diplomatic missions abroad an illegal nuclear proliferation trade with bogus companies and institutions to procure components, spare parts and crucial replacements for developing chemical, biological, conventional and nuclear weapons. It has been expressed clearly that Pakistan has continued to buy far more components and materials than were needed for its ‘peaceful’ nuclear programme.

The ‘leaked’ western intelligence report on nuclear proliferation, particularly the role of Pakistan, has naturally been considerably down played, as if Pakistan was shopping for fire crackers. After the exposure of the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market and his subsequent ‘house arrest’ the US and its western allies have been hammering in the point that Pakistan has started to behave like a responsible nuclear state. The report lays bare the truth behind that US-led propaganda designed to keep Islamabad on the side of Washington in the so-called war on terror.

The ‘leaked’ report, based on inputs from Britain, France, Germany and Belgium, has also put into question the certificate that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed el-Baradei had given to Pakistan as recently as November 2005, maintaining that Islamabad had extended ‘good cooperation’ to the UN nuclear watchdog agency in resolving the many pieces in the Iranian nuclear puzzle.

Pakistan’s reaction to the ‘leaked’ report has been vague, as was to be expected. ‘We have completely dismantled the underground network of A. Q. Khan’ is the standard line Islamabad takes whenever the matter of its proliferation activities crops up. The credibility of this stock reply should be clear from the fact that reports about Pakistan’s continued efforts to build up its nuclear arsenal keep surfacing every now and then.

Pakistan has also denied another (‘leaked’?) report in the western media that it was planning to buy $10 billion worth of nuclear reactors from China, ostensibly to boost its nuclear energy programme. The story is that Pakistan proposes to procure between six to eight reactors, each of 600 mw, as it races to meet its goal of producing 8800 mw of nuclear energy by 2030 from the present level of 425 mw from its two nuclear reactors, one built by Canada and the second, at Chashma in Punjab, by China. The Chinese have just helped the launch of a third reactor at Chashma. Pakistan has, of course, denied that it is in talks with Beijing to purchase eight nuclear reactors. But by now the world, or at least most people in India, know how serious Pakistani denials on matters that expose its odious intents are.

That the Pakistani nuclear programme has been built to a great extent with the Chinese help is well known. China has flouted its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to help Pakistan and there can be no doubt that it will do so again. It is to be noted that Pakistan has showed a sudden urge to boost its nuclear energy programme after India and the US reportedly agreed on a civilian nuclear cooperation programme the future of which, however, is not clear at the moment. Pakistan objected to the proposed Indo-US deal and when much to Islamabad’s disappointment it failed to move the US, it asked the US to offer it a deal similar to the one being offered to India. The US has kept mum on the latter issue, probably fearing a hue and cry in India. But no one should be surprised if at a later stage the US replicates the Indian nuclear deal with Pakistan.

Before that happens, India will do well to ask the US to be more honest in persuading Pakistan to dismantle its clandestine nuclear trade--as also its terror machine—for its own good. Washington has to insist on access to Khan to know the truth behind the Pakistani claim that his nuclear black market has become dormant and Pakistan has nothing to do with the Iranian nuclear programme or its suspected help, extended earlier, to Saudi Arabia’s desire to acquire nuclear arms.

Pakistan’s nuclear programme was started by the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto with the help of A. Q Khan. The purpose of this programme was very clear: countering India after the Pokharan explosion in 1974. It is strange that the West insists that Iran’s nuclear programme is not energy-oriented as Tehran says but ignores the more clear signs that Pakistan’s nuclear programme is almost entirely geared for aggressive military aims—and proliferation on an audacious scale.

The western, more specifically American, perfidy in taking the rogue and irresponsible activities of Pakistan lightly cannot give any comfort to India. Despite the ‘house arrest’ of A. Q. Khan the huge nuclear black market that he had set up remains alive. The ‘father’ of Pakistani nuclear bomb, Khan, a metallurgist, had offered his services to Bhutto after Pokharan One. At that time he was working at Almelo in the Netherlands with a Dutch uranium firm, Urenco. His activities in the Netherlands aroused sufficient suspicion among the Americans, firmly allied to Pakistan, to keep a vigil on him. The Dutch did not like what Khan was doing—stealing nuclear secrets---and wanted to arrest him. The CIA put pressure on the Dutch government not to arrest him because the agency said it was shadowing him to collect more information about his activities and contacts. This much was revealed by the former Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers, in August last year.

Khan got wind of trouble that was likely to hit him and fled to the safety of Pakistan in 1976 where Bhutto treated him as a hero and handed him a blank cheque to start up an ambitious nuclear programme. However, a court in Holland tried him in absentia and sentenced him to prison on charges of nuclear spying. The charge was overturned later on a ‘technicality’. Khan was never known to have set foot on the Dutch soil again, though before he left Holland, he had acquired a wife in that country. And now he lives well ensconced in his palatial bungalow in Islamabad, perhaps watching with glee that the clandestine operations he had started go on regardless of what the world is told by Musharraf and others.


Courtesy : Syndicate Features

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