The hand-wringing continues in Washington over the recent exposure of Pakistan’s role as a global nuclear Wal-Mart. But the Bush administration has yet to confront Pervez Musharraf, the general now ruling in Islamabad, with a set of clear demands designed to prevent both the further proliferation of uranium enrichment technology and the leakage of fissile material to Islamic terrorist groups.

As a condition for unlocking $3bn more in projected economic and military aid and for formalising Pakistan’s new designation as “a major non-Nato ally” — a move announced yesterday by Colin Powell, secretary of state, during his visit there — the US should insist on meaningful steps towards US and international monitoring of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. A limited but significant first step — and one that would be politically digestible in Pakistan —would be co-operative security efforts modelled on the 10-year-old US-Russian programme that gives US scientists direct access to Russian nuclear laboratories.

Gen Musharraf argues that no other country has ever surrendered its sovereignty to the extent now being suggested. But in reality, the “lab-to-lab” agreement between Washington and Moscow provides a direct precedent for what is now needed. Russia agreed to intrusions on its nuclear sovereignty because it needed close ties with the US for economic reasons, just as Pakistan now does. It recognised that this would be impossible without US confidence in the security of its nuclear installations.

Since 1994, US scientists from the Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories have shuttled back and forth to Russian nuclear facilities in Chelyabinsk, Sarov and eight other Russian cities, helping to train Russians in the use of US-supplied security systems. These include equipment for screening personnel access, sophisticated metal detectors, video surveillance networks, protective fencing and a range of other state-of-the-art technologies.

While the US and Pakistan have an ongoing dialogue on nuclear security, Islamabad has declined a US offer to help implement measures to prevent the leakage of nuclear materials. Significantly, that offer focused solely on a secure command and control system for Pakistan’s existing arsenal of an estimated 48 nuclear weapons. It ignored the protection of Pakistan’s stockpile of enriched uranium – sufficient to make more than 50 weapons – and a smaller plutonium stockpile sufficient for two weapons with yields of up to 20 kilotons.

It is politically unrealistic to expect Pakistan to permit outside access to its operational nuclear weapons. But it would not be unrealistic for the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency to insist on bilateral and multilateral scrutiny of the seven nuclear facilities where much of the nuclear material vulnerable to leakage is stored.

Officials in Washington fear that too much pressure could provoke Gen Musharraf’s ousting by a more nationalistic general who would end Pakistani co-operation in fighting al-Qaeda. But preventing nuclear proliferation and the leakage of nuclear material is a paramount US interest, no less important than combating al-Qaeda. In any case, the unpopular military regime in Pakistan needs US economic and military support to survive, and it is Washington, not Islamabad, that holds the whip hand. Gen Musharraf’s successor will need US support just as much as he does.

Threats to withhold new aid would not be enough to get Islamabad’s nuclear co-operation. Compelling positive incentives would also be necessary, such as access to the US textile market, which the White House promised when Gen Musharraf signed on as a US ally after September 11, 2001. Looking ahead, if a co-operative nuclear security regime were gradually put in place, the US could also consider sales of civilian nuclear reactors to Islamabad as part of a broader relaxation of the current ban on such sales to both India and Pakistan. This would help New Delhi and Islamabad alike in their desperate race to keep pace with their ever-expanding energy needs.

To be sure, no nuclear security regime can be foolproof if the Pakistan government continues to harbour Islamic extremist sympathizers and if Gen Musharraf (or his successor) is unable to control a faction-ridden military and nuclear bureaucracy. Dealing with the nuclear threat posed by Pakistan will clearly take time. Ultimately it will require a long-term transition from the anarchy of successive military dictatorships to a more stable democratic order in which Islamic extremist influence is reduced. But this sobering reality is no excuse for failing to confront the military dictator of the moment with realistic minimum demands that would do as much as possible to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle.