Gen. Pervez Musharraf

In light of worldwide criticism of Washington strongarming countries to walk its path, it is ironic that critics in the U.S. and elsewhere say the Bush administration is not putting enough pressure on Islamabad to gain access to its nuclear bomb technology proliferators A.Q. Khan and his papers. Instead, according to The New York Times, the Bush administration is involved in an investigative struggle with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear wing of the United Nations, on unraveling the Pakistani scientist’s proliferation network, and Washington is loath to press the general ruling the Islamic South Asian nation for fear it will negatively affect the hunt for terrorists.

These are some of the conclusions from an investigative report The New York Times carried on Dec. 26, entitled ‘As Nuclear Secrets Emerge in Khan Inquiry, More Are Suspected.’

A.Q. Khan

The lengthy report notes that the Central Intelligence Agency had been tracking Khan for several decades, even preventing Dutch authorities from arresting him long ago, and yet failed to find out he was selling nuclear materials to countries like Libya and Iran and possibly to some U.S. allies. And the investigation is being further thwarted by U.S. suspicions that the IAEA is made up of officials from countries that may have bought from Khan and that secrets uncovered by U.S. intelligence could not be shared.

“President Bush boasts that the Khan network has been dismantled. But there is evidence that parts of it live on, as do investigations in Washington and Vienna, where the IAEA is based,” says The Times report. Quoting nuclear intelligence officials and former administration officials, the report maintains that the “global” reach of the Khan network is yet being discovered.

“But the inquiry has been hampered by discord between the Bush administration and the nuclear watchdog, and by Washington’s concern that if it pushes too hard for access to Dr. Khan, a national hero in Pakistan, it could destabilize an ally,” says the report.

The Pakistani government has been treated with kid-gloves as it were, and has succeeded in filtering the information it shares with Washington, indicates the report.

“In the 11 months since Dr. Khan’s partial confession, Pakistan has denied American investigators access to him. They have passed questions through the Pakistanis, but report that there is virtually no new information on critical questions like who else obtained the bomb design. Nor have American investigators been given access to Dr. Khan’s chief operating officer, Buhari Sayed Abu Tahir, who is in a Malaysian jail,” notes The Times.

It says that in December, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that as pressure was mounting on General Musharraf, “I said to him, ‘We know so much about this that we’re going to go public with it. And you need to deal with this before you have to deal with it publicly.” But it only resulted in a publicly televised admission and apology from Khan and no later access was given to Washington.

In its at best peripheral investigation of the scientist, U.S. intelligence is looking at the countries Khan visited immediately prior to his incarceration and consequent pardon from the Pakistani President. Khan apparently visited Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates, many of them Islamic, some of them uranium rich, and several of them, U.S. allies.

After Libya gave up its nuclear program and materials seized from a ship bound for Libya were transported to Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratories, the numerous centrifuges were missing their rotors, instruments that make the centrifuges work. The scary thought is in whose hands these rotors could be today. “To this day, it is not clear where those parts were coming from. While some officials believe the Libyans were going to make their own, others fear the equipment had been shipped from an unknown location –– and that the network, while headless, is still alive,” notes The Times.

Jack Pritchard, former Clinton advisor and special envoy to North Korea who quit last year over President Bush’s Korea policy, told The Times, “It is an unbelievable story, how this administration has given Pakistan a pass on the single worst case of proliferation in the past half century. ...We’ve given them a pass because of Musharraf’s agreement to fight terrorism, and now there is some suggestion that the hunt for Osama is waning. And what have we learned from Khan? Nothing.”