Pakistan's nuclear hero throws open Pandora's box

[pinto]

Investigators have uncovered a sophisticated black market in components with Islamabad at its centre

Ian Traynor in Vienna
Saturday January 31, 2004
The Guardian

While on a tour of eight Asian countries in the summer of 2002, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, arrived in Islamabad with a special request.

Mr Powell asked Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, to arrest Abdul Qadeer Khan, the mastermind of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme and a hero in the country. His demand was extraordinary but so were the allegations which went with it.

He said Mr Khan needed to be questioned over the alleged secret trading of Pakistan's nuclear technology to North Korea and he had evidence.

<snip>

Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear analyst at the Carnegie Endowment said: "There's concern that this thing has spread beyond their control. Once you let the chickens loose, you can't get them back into the coop."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,1135961,00.html

[salinen]

1. When a few more nations have the bomb

maybe then the U.S. will change policy to propose peaceful solutions to international disputes. Until then, bombs away.

[SidDithers]

2. Wonder if Powell got that info from Valerie Plame or her network...

That would be kind of ironic, no?

Sid