Reagan Agrees to Continued Aid to Pakistan

President Reagan on Friday adopted a State Department recommendation to continue U.S. assistance to Pakistan despite evidence that Pakistan tried to smuggle nuclear-weapons material out of the United States--an act that normally would trigger an automatic cutoff of aid.

The action effectively releases $480 million in American economic and military assistance for the Pakistanis, who are believed to be developing nuclear weapons in a Third World arms race with India.

The $480 million is the first part of a six-year, $4.2-billion aid package that Congress approved for Pakistan last month. The congressional action left Reagan to decide whether Pakistan sh1869966436banning aid to countries building such weapons.

Pakistan has denied that it has nuclear weapons.

Move Assailed by Glenn

Reagan’s move was sharply attacked by a leading Senate arms control advocate, Ohio Democrat John Glenn, who called it “a severe blow to nuclear nonproliferation.”

The decision to exempt Pakistan from a ban on aid, he said, “would only provide further evidence of how far this Administration has retreated from past U.S. commitments to stop the global spread of nuclear weapons.”

However, the White House said in a prepared statement that Pakistan “is aware of our continuing concern over certain aspects of its nuclear program” and continues to honor “crucial nonproliferation criteria” of U.S. nuclear-weapons policy.

The waiver was approved, the statement said, because allowing a ban on U.S. aid “would be counterproductive for the strategic interests of the United States, destabilizing for South Asia” and unlikely to stop Pakistan from building bombs, in any case.

Of Vital Interest to U.S.

Pakistan, a staging ground for U.S.-backed resistance forces battling the Soviet-backed Afghanistan government, is regarded by the Administration as strategic to U.S. interests.

Congressional criticism of Pakistan grew last month when a Pakistani-born businessman was convicted of attempting to smuggle to Pakistan 25 tons of special-alloy steel used in plants that make weapons-grade uranium. The man, Canadian citizen Arshad Z. Pervez, also tried to smuggle beryllium, another metal used in weapons production.

U.S. intelligence officials are reported to have concluded that Pakistan is already making weapons-grade uranium, despite assurances to the contrary to the United States, and that it played a role in the Pervez smuggling scheme.

That evidence normally would trigger two congressional amendments, enacted in 1976 and 1985, which generally bar U.S. assistance to nations seeking to build new nuclear arsenals.