Newsweek International Edition
New Rules for Nukes As Bush pens a nuclear deal with India, Pakistan's Musharraf is keeping his 'strategic options open.'
By Michael Hirsh Newsweek
March 13, 2006 issue - George W. Bush doesn't seem to have many friends in Pakistan. To greet him on his visit last week, Islamic and secular political parties came to an unprecedented agreement to paralyze the country with a strike. Thousands of people rallied at what Urdu newspapers called "Bush Dog Go Home" protests, and a suicide bombing killed a U.S. diplomat in Karachi. Pakistani authorities virtually locked down Islamabad in order to protect the president, emptying the streets and detaining some 4,000 people.
Bush still has a devoted ally in Pervez Musharraf, who hung banners along the vacant motorcade route showing the two leaders smiling side by side. But even the Pakistani president's loyalties may soon be divided. The day before Bush flew to Islamabad in the dead of night, with his wing lights off and the window shades down, Musharraf delivered an address in his native Urdu to Pakistan's National Defense College. He had just returned from a trip to China, Pakistan's old cold-war arms supplier. "America has signed a civil nuclear agreement with India on the basis of what it sees to be its interests," Musharraf said. "My recent trip to China was part of my effort to keep Pakistan's strategic options open."
What Musharraf gets from China could help determine whether Bush's new diplomatic accord with India is a triumph—or the trigger for a new era of proliferation. Both India and Pakistan have been subject to U.S. sanctions since the archrivals tested nuclear weapons in the late ' 90s. But under the terms of the U.S. deal, which was eight months in the making, India alone would be brought back from official outcast status. New Delhi agreed to subject 14 of its reactors to international inspection by 2014. But it reserves the right to produce unlimited fissile material, to keep its eight military reactors from any scrutiny and to build as many more as it wants. In return India will receive U.S. investment and equipment directed toward expanding its civilian nuclear program.
Pakistan, Bush told Musharraf in no uncertain terms, will get no such deal. That is largely because it has been a notorious nuclear proliferator; Pakistan's former chief government scientist, AQ Khan, ran the world's biggest black market in nuclear equipment until a few years ago. Now critics like nuclear expert Robert Einhorn worry that Musharraf may go looking for friends in Beijing. And China may be happy to oblige, since the new U.S.-India strategic relationship is thought to be directed at Beijing's growing power. "As long as India is producing fissile material [for bombs], Pakistan is going to produce," Einhorn says.
Bush could face a tough fight over approval for the accord in Congress and also within the international Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls uranium exports. Opponents on Capitol Hill from both parties suggested that Bush, in his eagerness for a win after weeks of grim news, had caved to Delhi. "You can't break the rules for India and expect Iran to play by them, or Pakistan or North Korea," said Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
Jehangir Karamat, the Pakistani ambassador to Washington, told NEWSWEEK that Pakistan had no intention of starting an arms race. But he added: "That's the worry. That's the fear. If India ratchets up that kind of race as a result [of the nuclear pact], it would be unfortunate."
The timing of the deal was also unlucky. It was inked only four days before a critical meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, where Washington will renew pressure on Iran to give up a right that Bush has now conceded to Delhi: uranium enrichment. "The message this is sending is that membership in the NPT [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] is a hindrance"—and that if you hold out long enough the Americans will weaken, said an Iranian official who spoke anonymously because he is not permitted to talk on the record to Western media.
Nonsense, Bush officials say: this agreement is for India only, which is being rewarded because it is a vibrant democracy and has, unlike Pakistan, a sterling record on nonproliferation. To his credit, Bush made this plain to Musharraf. The question now is how the Pakistani leader will react.
With Ron Moreau in Islamabad and Holly Bailey traveling with the president (c) 2006 Newsweek, Inc.