Bomb Project Could Lead Congress to Cut Off Aid : Pakistan’s Nuclear Secret Goes Public

A candid speech by the U.S. ambassador here and a bit of indiscreet bragging by a controversial Pakistan scientist have taken the lid off of one of the worst-kept secrets in Asia--Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons.

In addition to accelerating the arms race with arch-enemy India, the confirmation is likely to have consequences in the U.S. Congress, where members are struggling to justify a new six-year, $4-billion aid program to Pakistan. But it may also serve to move U.S.-Pakistani relations, nurtured by shared opposition to Soviet intervention in neighboring Afghanistan, to a more realistic plane.

U.S. officials, at least in public, have long accepted the Pakistani government’s denials that its nuclear program was involved in developing a weapon.

“American diplomats should no longer stand and tell the Congress of the United States that everything the Pakistanis were saying is true,” one Western diplomatic source here said.

The revised U.S. position was reflected first in a Feb. 16 speech here by Ambassador Dean Hinton.

“There are developments in Pakistan’s nuclear program which we see as inconsistent with a purely peaceful program,” Hinton said.

Three weeks later, before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert Peck testified that the United States could no longer obtain “reliable assurances” from Pakistan that it was not producing nuclear explosive materials.

Under U.S. law, Congress is prohibited from giving aid to a country that does not allow inspection of its nuclear facilities. The 1977 Symington Amendment also requires the President of the United States to certify that he has “reliable assurances that the country in question will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons.”

Although President Jimmy Carter cut off aid to Pakistan in 1979 over the nuclear issue, his Administration moved to restore it later the same year after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan, which now shelters 3 million Afghan refugees, is also the vital conduit for the American supply of weapons and materials to rebels fighting inside Afghanistan.

Because of this commitment to the Afghan issue by both countries, Congress and State Department officials were willing to grant an exception to the Symington Amendment, with the result that Pakistan has been able to receive $3.2 billion in aid since 1980. An extension of the exemption is again being debated in Congress.

Thinly Veiled Fiction

The new U.S. candor on Pakistan’s capabilities has essentially ended six years of official American participation in a thinly veiled fiction about the Pakistani weapons program, which was launched by former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after the 1971 defeat of Pakistan by India in the Bangladesh war.

The Pakistani pose of denying a nuclear weapons program while rushing headlong into research at the nearby Kahuta uranium enrichment facility was summed up by a recent magazine headline here: “Yes, We Have No Bomb.”

Although Pakistani agents have been caught in several international incidents attempting to buy or smuggle sophisticated equipment or materials for the heavily guarded Kahuta facility near here, most officials steadfastly denied that there was any weapons program.

However, details of the program and its progress have dribbled out, mostly in unauthorized statements by the country’s eccentric top nuclear scientist, Abdel Qader Khan. Although Pakistani leaders had been able to restrain other officials from talking about the bomb, they appear to have no control over Khan, 52, a fiercely nationalistic Pakistani and Muslim who believes that his country is a target for Western, Israeli and Hindu conspiracies, and who peppers his statements with quotations from Napoleon and Winston Churchill, among others.

Sees West as Enemy

“All Western countries, including Israel, are not only the enemies of Pakistan, but in fact, of Islam,” Khan said.

Khan, who migrated to Pakistan from India in 1952, claims that he was taunted by Hindus as he walked the last miles barefoot across the Indian desert sands.

“I walked eight miles on burning sand with my suitcase on my head. The mischief and humiliation to which we were subjected by the Hindu railway personnel and Hindu police is still vivid in my memory.”

Driven by his open hatred of neighboring India, which exploded its own nuclear device in 1974 but which has so far, according to most Western nuclear-proliferation experts, not moved to produce nuclear weapons, Khan has directed an intense Pakistani drive to enrich locally mined uranium to the weapons-grade level.

This process, mastered by only a few Western countries including the United States, involved an extremely high level of centrifuge technology and very high-quality materials. Despite these obstacles, the German- and Dutch-educated Khan appears to have succeeded.

‘We Left India Behind’

“There is no doubt about it that Pakistan has achieved mastery of uranium enrichment by centrifuge method and that we have left India behind by many years,” Khan boasted in an article written three years ago for the Defense Journal of Pakistan, published in Karachi.

He continued: “The Indians will find it next to impossible to catch up with us, if they ever try. . . . There is nothing which stands in our way technically to stop us from enriching to 90% (of) weapons-grade level. It is this possibility and capability that has sent jitters through Indians and a number of Western countries.”

This sobering revelation about Pakistan’s enrichment potential prompted President Reagan to write a September, 1984, letter to Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq asking him to restrict the enrichment of uranium at the Kahuta plant to a 5% level or less, the acceptable level for nonweapon uses.

However, U.S. officials concede that the Administration effort appears to have failed. U.S. intelligence sources said last fall that Pakistan had achieved weapons-grade levels.

This was given even more credence earlier this month when the outspoken Khan, described by a senior Western diplomat here as an “egotistical maniac,” made his most controversial public statement ever, this time to a visiting Indian journalist.

Bold Claims

In the interview by New Dehli journalist Kuldip Nayar, published simultaneously in a Pakistani newspaper, Khan made bold claims about Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities.

“What the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct and so is the speculation of some foreign newspapers,” Khan was reported as saying. “They told us that Pakistan could never produce a bomb, and they doubted my capabilities, but they know now we have done it.”

Khan has since denied making the statement. Reporters attempting to contact him at his large, heavily guarded residence after the interview were shooed away by his wife, who shouted:

“No way, gentleman! No interview, and I think you know why.”

The government of Pakistan has reacted by first attacking the accuracy of the Khan quotations and then--after the interview was corroborated by a Pakistani journalist who accompanied the Indian reporter--by questioning the credibility of its own senior nuclear scientist.

Official Denial

“God only knows what he actually said,” one exasperated senior official exclaimed. “If he is provoked, his blood pressure can build and he will say anything. But the statement that Pakistan has developed the bomb is absolutely false. Pakistan does not possess the bomb or any nuclear explosive device.

“Mr. A. Q. Khan,” the official continued, “is a scientist. He does not speak for the Pakistan government.”

The Pakistan journalist involved, Mushahid Hussain Sayed, editor of the left-wing Islamabad paper The Muslim, has since been forced to resign and ordered by the government not to leave the country. Plainclothes police are stationed in front of his home, including one attempting to monitor conversations inside the journalist’s home with a crudely packaged remote microphone.

Hussain, 34, a highly respected writer who obtained an advanced degree in foreign affairs from Georgetown University in Washington, was philosophical about his treatment and about threats printed in other newspapers that he could be charged with treason:

“They are definitely looking for a fall guy. I know I have done nothing wrong at all, and if they want to press charges, they will have to fabricate a case against me.”

Scientist ‘Invaluable’

Meanwhile, there appears to have been no action taken against Khan.

Commented one senior Western diplomat: “They can’t get rid of him because he’s invaluable. He has really achieved miracles for them. He stole technology and made it work. He is an extraordinarily clever man.”

The diplomat argued that the fallout from the latest Khan revelations and the new U.S. candor on Pakistan’s nuclear potential “removes some of the hypocrisy and posturing around this issue.”