Opinion Explosive disclosures
The latest disclosures in the Sunday Times by British correspondent Simon Henderson (September 20,2009),quotes excerpts from...
The latest disclosures in the Sunday Times by British correspondent Simon Henderson (September 20,2009),quotes excerpts from the letter written by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr A.Q. Khan to his Dutch wife Henny in 2003,when he was under detention and interrogation by Pakistani authorities. These excerpts not only reveal Chinas primary role in the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme and the deep involvement of successive governments and army chiefs in Pakistani proliferation,it also impeaches the credibility of US President George Bush,the US intelligence establishment and a number of academics and think-tanks who accepted the official Pakistani version put out in 2004 about Khan being solely responsible for Pakistani proliferation without the knowledge of Pakistani army and its governments. One can straightaway predict that the Pakistani government,the army,and much of the media and academic establishment will immediately denounce the disclosure as fabrication and one mans unsubstantiated version. Dr A.Q.Khan himself may execute one of his U-turns and disown the letter and its authenticity. There are enormous international,Pakistani and Chinese vested interests in impeaching the contents of the letter.
Henderson has only quoted excerpts from the four-page letter. One does not know whether what he has withheld relate to less important matters or more explosive issues. For instance,there is no mention in the letter about A.Q.Khans linkages with the CIA,about which the former Dutch Prime Minister Dr Rudd Lubbers has told several audiences,including the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in Delhi. It is obvious that over the last five years since Khan became the most notorious proliferator,American efforts to get access to him is less than whole-hearted.The Pakistani leadership has been able to deny the International Atomic Energy Agency access to Dr Khan in view of the US and Western interests in covering up the full details of Khans proliferation,which included US and Western European permissiveness of Khans proliferation efforts during the Eighties. Khan claims that Pakistan helped to put up the Chinese uranium centrifuge plant at Hanzhong in the early Eighties. Most of the equipment for that should have been procured from Western Europe. Recently,Swiss authorities announced that they destroyed a computer recovered from Urs Tinner,one of Khans primary contractors,also a CIA informant,which contained a bomb design more advanced than the earlier design supplied by China.
Khan has secured relative freedom to travel within Pakistan and his pension has been raised from 200 to 2500 dollars per month by the Pakistan army. He got a lump sum payment of 50,000 dollars. The leakage of the contents of Khans 2003 letter at this stage could as well be his way of warning the Pakistani army and government,US and the international community,that he should be left unharmed since he has already planted his disclosures in bits and pieces in various parts of the world and they will come out if Khan were to meet with a fatal accident. Surely the present disclosures would not have been made without ascertaining that it will not harm Khan at this stage.
From the Indian point of view,Khans confirmation of the comprehensive nature and full scope of the crucial China connection in Pakistani weapons development is of primary importance. In this country there is a lot of understandable anti-US sentiment that grew in the last six decades of US arms aid to Pakistan. Now Khan has confirmed what had been known in the government and very limited strategic circles since the early Eighties that China has been arming Pakistan with nuclear weapons which the Pakistanis proclaim are India-specific. Subsequently,they also gave them missiles. It is their confidence in the deterrent shield provided by nuclear weapons-missile combination that makes the Pakistanis confident they can get away with their terror campaign against India.The Pakistan-China nuclear axis is still ongoing.The US has,of late,been trying to befriend and develop a partnership with India.Therefore,in our security calculus,China has to feature as an adverse factor. Keeping the border tranquil and developing trade relations with China,which are all essential,should not lead us to overlook the fact that the Pakistani nuclear-missile threat is a Chinese contribution. Why did this happen?
It started in 1976 when Z.A. Bhutto signed an agreement with China for nuclear collaboration. At that time,China did not join the Non-Proliferation Treaty,denouncing it since it did not permit all peace-loving countries to have the right to possess nuclear weapons. At that time for China,Pakistan was a peace-loving country entitled to have nuclear weapons and India was not. Bhutto considered this agreement the foremost achievement of his life and according to him,it was reached after eleven years of negotiations.
In other words,the talks on Pakistan-China nuclear weapon cooperation started in 1965. According to the book Nuclear Express by American scientists Thomas Reed and Danny Stillman,Deng Xiaoping pursued a deliberate policy of proliferation to Pakistan,North Korea and Iran. Presumably this was part of his anti-Soviet drive in the Eighties. The US,in its negotiations with Pakistan,agreed to look away from the Pakistani nuclear weapons effort with Chinese assistance as a quid pro quo for Pakistani support to the anti-Soviet mujahideen campaign. Western European countries shut their eyes to the export of nuclear technologies by their companies to Pakistan and through Pakistan to China.
For China,India was pro-Soviet and therefore arming Pakistan as a nuclear proxy was justified. The proliferation in North Korea and Iran about which the US and Western countries are so concerned today began when the Chinese let the genie out of the bottle in the Eighties and Pakistan followed up that effort with respect to Iran and North Korea. Dr A.Q. Khan was at the centre of this international proliferation phenomenon. Therefore there was a tacit understanding to cover up his proliferation activities in major dimensions. He had to be made a scapegoat but there was a limit to how far they could proceed against him without his exposing their own involvement. It was 9/11 and the fear of cooperation between Khan and his colleagues and al-Qaeda that necessitated the closing of the proliferation activities of Khan and Pakistani government. Once again,the US was prepared to shut its eyes to the Pakistani armys involvement provided they cooperated in shutting down the Khan network and took steps to prevent weapons falling into the hands of the terrorists. Khan was not the father of the Pakistani bomb.The responsibility to conduct the test was entrusted to Samar Mubarak Mund,who presumably had parallel access to Chinese weapon technology. A.Q. Khans glory lay in the fact that he managed the proliferation network,involving all major powers other than Soviet Union,successfully for well over twenty years andkept his linkages with CIA,and thereby escaped all punishment.
The writer is a senior defence analyst
Share
