Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi says Khan is history. What he does not tell the world is: if the present verdict is to be ,accepted that the case of proliferation against Khan has not been substantiated, how exactly did the illegal proliferation networks operate? Qureshi does not challenge the fact of their operation. Who in Pakistan authorised it? If the present administration of Pakistan repudiates the Musharraf version in regard to proliferation then what kind of credibility can the rest of the world place in its assurances? The very same General Khalid Kidwai who was reported to have obtained the confession from Khan is still heads the Nuclear Command Authority. How do the Americans profess to accept his assurances on nuclear safety even as the confession he obtained from Khan is called unsusbstantiated?

President Obama’s hero, Abraham Lincoln, said that some people might be deceived for all time, all people could deceived for some time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. US permissiveness towards Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal today should reflect that. Pakistan were able to take the past US establishments for a ride mainly because successive administrations shielded Pakistani nuclear proliferation efforts from their own people.

For example, the former Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, disclosed in radio and TV interviews in August 2005 that Khan was twice detained by the Dutch authorities on charges of nuclear espionage but was allowed to go free upon CIA intervention. And Zbigniew Brzezinski says now that, by July 1979, when President Carter signed the directive for US-Pakistani joint covert operations in Afghanistan against the Parcham-Khalq regime before the Soviet intervention in that country, the US was prepared to pay the price of being permissive of Pakistani proliferation. This understanding was confirmed when a Pakistani delegation under Agha Shahi met the US secretary of state, Alexander Haig, in 1982. The Pressler amendment was sponsored by the Reagan administration to forestall the proposed Glenn-Cranston legislation capping Pakistani uranium enrichment. Through the Pressler amendment Pakistan was enabled to move up to nuclear explosive capability, short of crossing it.

... contd.