Pakistani Leader Did Not OK Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Official Says; No Sanctions to Be Imposed

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Pakistani government officials undoubtedly were involved in recently disclosed nuclear weapons technology transfers to Iran, Libya and North Korea, and the most senior officials knew it was occurring, a senior U.S. official said yesterday (see GSN, March 19).

However, the United States does not believe that Pakistani leaders, including President Pervez Musharraf, were complicit in the proliferation and so no U.S. sanctions have been imposed, said Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton in testimony before the House International Relations Committee.

Former Pakistani nuclear weapons laboratory director Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed in February to coordinating the transfers.

“I don’t have any doubt that there were officials in the employ of the government of Pakistan — perhaps at Khan Research Laboratories, perhaps in the military — who participated in Khan’s network and probably enriched themselves just as Khan himself did,” Bolton said. “The issue is the extent to which, if at all, the top levels of the government of Pakistan were involved in his activities,” he added.

“Based on the information we have now, we believe that the proliferation activities that Mr. Khan confessed to recently — his activities in Libya, in Iran and North Korea, and perhaps elsewhere — were activities that he was carrying on without the approval of the top levels of the government of Pakistan. That is the position that President Musharraf has taken, and we have no evidence to the contrary,” he said.

Bolton said Musharraf may have been aware of the proliferation, but that it was not possible for the government to act until this year because of Khan’s status as a national icon and the Pakistani “internal political dynamic.” He cited recent attempts to assassinate the president.

Since Musharraf pardoned Khan the day after the scientist’s confession, the Bush administration has been criticized for not faulting or sanctioning the Pakistani government.

“One has to say it strains credulity to believe that the … Pakistani government was not aware in detail,” said Victor Gilinsky, commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Ford and Carter administrations, who testified on a panel following Bolton.

Committee Democrats yesterday grilled Bolton on the administration’s approach.

It should seem to even the “most casual of observers that you cannot use the military transport planes of Pakistan to deliver that kind of materiel and program to North Korea and others without the implicit support of the army of Pakistan,” said the committee’s ranking Democrat, Gary Ackerman (N.Y.).

He noted that Musharraf headed the Pakistani army while suspected transfers were occurring. Musharraf was the army’s chief and Pakistan’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee when he took control of the government following a military coup in October 1999.

Bolton argued that Khan’s use of Pakistani military aircraft for proliferation did not necessarily indicate that senior officials were involved.

“The understanding we have is that Khan Research Laboratories had extraordinary autonomy and quite likely could use military aircraft for purposes that others in the military would not necessarily know the purpose of because of [compartmentalization] of the information,” he said.

Representative William Delahunt (D-Mass.) cited a recent New York Times account of a Central Intelligence Agency report that a clandestine proliferation relationship between Pakistan and North Korea began in the early 1990s and accelerated between 1998 and 2002.

Bolton suggested the newspaper account was inaccurate, and refused to comment further, noting the report is classified.

Representative Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) cited reports that a ship containing nuclear industrial equipment seized last year en route to Libya reportedly contained uranium centrifuges built from a Pakistani design and originated with Khan associates in Malaysia (See GSN, Feb. 19).

“Yet you make the statement that no high-level officials knew of this transfer or Mr. Khan’s profits of over $100 million from Libya possibly alone,” she said.

A New Republic article published last week says Khan has a daughter who possesses information implicating high-level Pakistani officials in the proliferation, McCollum noted. Bolton refused to discuss the article in public.

Bolton said the United States is seeking information on how the proliferation took place by investigating the Khan network and soliciting information from the Pakistani government.

He said U.S. officials have concluded that speaking directly to Khan is unnecessary “because we are satisfied for now that the government of Pakistan is complying with the commitments they’ve made to us” to assist in the U.S. investigation of the scientist’s network.

Ackerman criticized the administration for announcing this month it would designate Pakistan a “major non-NATO ally” to the United States, which could give the country better access to U.S. military technology and training (see GSN, March 18).

“Instead of getting to the bottom of A.Q. Khan’s nefarious enterprise, the president proposes to make it easier for Pakistan to acquire sensitive U.S. technology?” Ackerman said.

“This double standard with regard to Pakistan makes a mockery of our nonproliferation efforts around the world,” he said.

Bolton said the special status “was based on other factors.”

Ackerman also questioned why the Bush administration has not so far sanctioned Pakistan under two proliferation sanctions laws, saying the administration is “giving them a pass on proliferating nuclear technology.”

“It is clear to me, and I think it should be clear to anyone else, that Pakistan sold nuclear technology and probably nuclear weapons designs to terrorist states, even those in the evil axis,” he said, referring to President George W. Bush’s categorization of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil.”

“If we had information about complicity of top levels of the government of Pakistan, we would act on it. At this point, there’s no such information,” Bolton said.

Ackerman acknowledged that Pakistan has supported U.S. efforts to fight international terrorists associated with al-Qaeda, as well as the political difficulties Musharraf faces within his country.

He said, though, that the administration has already provided Pakistan with $2 billion in aid in the past two years and is requesting $700 million for fiscal 2005, which “clearly already demonstrates our great support.”

Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) said the administration should be credited for “persuading the leaders of Pakistan to take active measures to interrupt the proliferation of nuclear materials and assistance that has metastasized unchecked from that country for many years.”

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