Posted on 11/09/2004 8:04:42 PM PST by Saberwielder
Khan Man?
David Armstrong
November 11, 2004
Since September 11, 2001, President Bush has consistently touted his administration's determination to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and regimes that sponsor them. As evidence of progress, in his first debate with John Kerry, the president proclaimed that the nuclear smuggling ring headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan had been "brought to justice." In truth, however, nothing of the kind has occurred. More than ten months after the public exposure of Khan's proliferation network, no one involved has been prosecuted. Khan himself received a full pardon from Musharraf. The Bush administration responded not by imposing sanctions on Pakistan but by praising Musharraf's government for its "serious efforts" to "end the activities of a dangerous network."
Now it turns out that Pakistan's new envoy to Washington may have sanctioned his proliferation. In late September, Islamabad announced the appointment of former Pakistani military chief General Jehangir Karamat as its ambassador-designate to the United States. Karamat, who is a close friend of Musharraf, served as head of Pakistan's armed forces from 1996 to 1998. Last February, following exposure of his black-market network, Khan told Pakistani investigators that he traded in nuclear technology with the full knowledge of top military officials, including Karamat, Karamat's predecessor as army chief, and Musharraf, who succeeded Karamat in that post.
Khan made the allegations in an eleven-page signed statement in which he confessed to selling atomic secrets beginning in 1988. A senior Pakistani military official told reporters in early February that Khan had named Karamat and retired General Mirza Aslam Beg, who headed Pakistan's army from 1988 to 1991, as authorizing the sales. According to the official, Khan's statement accused Karamat and Beg of "indirectly instructing" him to make the transfers. The official said Khan told investigators he had acted on instructions Karamat and Beg passed through two middlemen--one a military advisor to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the other a friend of Bhutto's. Moreover, a friend of Khan's told reporters in February that the scientist had recently informed him that Karamat, Musharraf, and Beg were "aware of everything" he had done. (In response to questions from The New Republic, Karamat flatly denied Khan's assertions.)
Yet in debriefings by investigators, Khan reportedly asserted that Karamat was immersed in the details of an arrangement in which Pakistan received help with its ballistic missile program in exchange for providing North Korea with uranium enrichment technology. During his tenure as army chief of staff, Karamat held overall responsibility for Pakistan's Ghauri mid-range missile program. In December 1997, he reportedly made a secret trip to North Korea. Four months later, in April 1998, he officiated at the first successful test of the Ghauri, widely believed to be a rechristened North Korean Nodong missile. "What Khan is implying is that there was a quid pro quo and that Karamat was aware of what was going on," says Gaurav Kampani, a senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. "[Khan] is suggesting that [Karamat] presided over the nuclear-for-missile transfer or actually signed off on it." Karamat insisted to The New Republic he did not travel to North Korea and was not aware of or involved in an exchange of missiles for nuclear technology.
Those who know Karamat describe him as a levelheaded, sober individual. Stephen Cohen, director of the South Asia Project at the Brookings Institution where Karamat was a visiting fellow in 2000, says Karamat is one of the most "sensible" and "reflective" officers the Pakistani military has produced. "I have great respect for him," Cohen said. "He's a very thoughtful guy. ... I think he's a very decent person." Yet Cohen and other close observers of Pakistani affairs agree there may be substance to A.Q. Khan's assertions. "There is no way Khan could have done what he did without at least the acquiescence of the Pakistani military establishment, [of which Karamat was a part]," says Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies South Asia.
All this puts the United States in an extremely awkward position. Having embraced Pakistan as an essential ally in the war on terror, the Bush administration is loath to risk a rupture over the issue of proliferation. As a result, says Tellis, "The U.S. has essentially acquiesced to the Pakistani government's position on this matter." The upshot is that even as the administration proclaims its commitment to halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction, it finds itself unable to meaningfully address the most dangerous proliferation crisis in history.
Karamat is a case in point. Washington's response to his nomination as ambassador has been muted. The administration accepted his appointment shortly after it was announced. The general is expected to present his credentials to President Bush and take up his new post shortly. Asked to comment on A.Q. Khan's allegations concerning Karamat, the State Department declined.
Yet if Khan is telling the truth, then the Bush administration needs to take a good hard look at those he implicated, including Karamat and Musharraf, and determine whether it is in this country's interest to remain in bed with them. Until there is a full investigation of the Khan affair, it will be impossible to know which of the scientist's nuclear deals were approved by Pakistani officials, or even whether the nuclear network has been shut down. A truly independent investigation would require free and unfettered access to Khan and his cohorts, something Musharraf has so far refused to allow. In fact, on the very day Bush declared that Khan had been "brought to justice," the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that it had been barred from interviewing the master proliferator.
In early October, during their second presidential debate, both Kerry and Bush cited nuclear proliferation as the single greatest threat to American security. Vice President Dick Cheney has said repeatedly that he is worried about a terrorist nuclear attack within the United States. Yet the Bush administration seems incapable of matching its professed concerns with action when it comes to Pakistan. Doing so would require that the administration confront the ugly reality that its chosen partner in the war on terror is also the source of the greatest danger facing this country. That apparently is a choice President Bush and company are unwilling, or unable, to make. Until they do, the United States--and the world--will live in the shadow of a potential nuclear nightmare.
But I think the substance of this piece is pretty accurate in that General Karamat was the man who oversaw Pakistan's nuclear-missile deals with North Korea. He personally oversaw many areas of the deal as Army Chief.
While the article unnecessarily blames the Bush admin, it definitely sends a bad signal for us to accept a nuclear proliferation tainted figure as an ambassador of a critical nation. It's almost as if Musharraf is thumbing his nose at us by nominating this guy after the A.Q.Khan ring was exposed. Quite scandolous, IMO.
Opps. the date should have been November 9 instead of the 11th.
Hey, Saberwielder, who are you trying to kid with this one? The election is over, Bush won, and these guys at New Republic are not NEW...They are old time leftists...read, and I quote, "George W. Bush's astonishing contempt for empirical evidence and honest debate is producing a fiscal crisis at home, a disaster in Iraq, and a more dangerous world. John Kerry can do better." and "The Duelfer report is the final blow to the White House's WMD rationale for the Iraq war--and maybe to the doctrine of preemption itself."
These guys are not just "liberals" (oh, I used the "L" word...they are LEFT of anything good for this country. And this is all so much New Republic bovine feces. If you buy their crap, you have no more discernment re leftist agendas than does tweedle-dee.
But just because a Liberal paper says something about a foreign country doesn't make it untrue, does it?
Gen. Karamat has been known for a long time as a nuclear proliferation tainted person. He was the man in charge of Pakistan Army's missile and nuclear forces at the same time when Pakistan and North Korea cut the nuclear/missile barter deal (1996-1998).
This guy is bad news as an ambassador. The fact that Gen. Karamat is bad news is accepted by people in the know on both sides of the political aisle. For instance, Ashley Tellis, who is quoted in the piece is likely to get some advisory role in the Bush administration. Tellis was offered an advisory post in the NSC last term but had to decline due to health reasons.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists is still the biggest threat out there and accepting this guy as an ambassador makes a mockery of our efforts to crack down on nuke proliferation. And Bush has to confront this threat again in the next four years, the way things are going. There are already reports that A.Q.Khan was linked to a fourth nation's nuke program, other than North Korea, Iran and Libya. It's likely to be Saudi Arabia. But we won't know until Khan is forced to talk to non-Pakistani investigators away from his Pakistani handlers. The threat is real. But if we keep saying all bad news is cooked up by Leftist extremists, we are close to being clones of the "Vast Right-wing conspiracy" blaming Left or the "Jewish conspiracy" blaming Islamists.
Bush cannot be blamed for Musharraf's chutzpah in nominating a proliferation tainted General as Ambassador to Washington. But he has to deal with the issue nonetheless.
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