Despite clear evidence that Pakistan provided North Korea with nuclear technology, the United States is doing nothing either to punish Islamabad or to prevent it from continuing to help Pyongyang — and, equally important, from selling nuclear technology to other would-be nuclear powers, like Saudi Arabia.

After a six-month internal policy battle, the Bush administration decided in late March not to impose sanctions against Pakistan for helping the North Korean nuclear program. Opponents of sanctions had argued that punishing Islamabad would jeopardize cooperation with President Pervez Musharraf in combating Al Qaeda. But this argument underestimates Musharraf's deep dependence on his U.S. connection both for Pakistan's economic stability and for his personal political survival.

The United States need not make an either-or choice between keeping Pakistan as an ally against Al Qaeda and making sure that it stops transferring nuclear technology. Both critical objectives can be achieved with a determined carrot-and-stick diplomacy.

Washington should insist on the intrusive inspections necessary to guard against nuclear transfers and the leakage of fissile material to terrorist groups. In return, the United States should offer Islamabad economic incentives, including access to the U.S. textile market, which Islamabad has been seeking in vain. If Musharraf balks, the administration should make clear that it will go ahead with sanctions and, if necessary, suspend all U.S. economic aid.

Evidence abounds that Pakistan supplied enrichment technology to North Korea beginning in 1998 in exchange for missiles. A Department of Energy report in 1999 and a CIA report in June 2001, recently revealed by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, spell out this collaboration. But Secretary of State Colin Powell has implied that Pakistani help for the North Korean nuclear effort stopped after Musharraf's military coup in late 1999. Musharraf had assured him, Powell said, that "there is no interchange of any kind taking place now. We didn't talk about the past."

Whether Musharraf has really stopped nuclear transfers to North Korea remains doubtful. Soon after he took over, the United States pressed him to remove the controversial czar of the Pakistani nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, who has visited North Korea 13 times. Musharraf did not oust Khan until March, 2001, and continued to retain him as a special adviser.

The "smoking gun" that triggered the U.S. confrontation with North Korea over the uranium issue last October was not discovered until August 2002. A high-level State Department source told me that a British intelligence agent inside the Pakistan High Commission in London found incriminating documents showing that Pakistan was still helping North Korea at that late date, three years after Musharraf took power.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for a U.S. nuclear inspection regime in Pakistan is that its nuclear facilities are riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers who might smuggle fissile material out to terrorists. In addition to its 48 existing nuclear weapons, Pakistan is also believed to have enough fissile material in storage to make 52 more.

 

The writer, director of the Center for International Policy in Washington, is author of the recently published "Korean Endgame."