Kristof: Twisting Dr. Nuke's Arm (Dr Khan may be our blowback)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/25/opinion/25kristoff.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

President Bush has been searching vainly for Osama bin Laden for three years now, so I've decided to help him out. I'm traveling through Pakistan and Afghanistan to see whether I can find Osama, bring him back in my luggage and claim that $25 million reward.

So for the last few days, I've been peering into mosques and down village wells, even under mullahs' couches. No luck so far, but I did find something almost as interesting.

I'm talking about the arrangement under which the U.S. cuts Pakistan some slack on nuclear proliferation, in exchange for President Pervez Musharraf's joining aggressively in the hunt for Osama - in the hope of catching him by Nov. 2.

If a nuclear weapon destroys the U.S. Capitol in coming years, it will probably be based in part on Pakistani technology. The biggest challenge to civilization in recent years came not from Osama or Saddam Hussein but from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Dr. Khan definitely sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and, officials believe, to several more nations as well.

But, amazingly, eight months after Dr. Khan publicly confessed, we still don't know who the rest of his customers were. Mr. Musharraf acknowledged as much in an interview.