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Bush Administration Knew of Pakistan Nuclear Expansion Plans, Did Not Inform Congress
The Bush administration was aware that Pakistan was building a large new heavy-water nuclear reactor but failed to inform Congress of the activity, the Washington Post reported today. Critics said the administration should have disclosed intelligence on the facility while Congress is in the middle of a debate over a bilateral nuclear deal with India, Pakistan’s neighbor and nuclear rival. “If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind,” said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.), co-chairman of a House task force on nonproliferation. “The Bush administration’s proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely.” Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said he was surprised that the Bush administration did not inform Congress. “What is baffling is that this information — which was surely information that our own intelligence agencies had — was kept from Congress,” he said. White House spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday that the administration discourages “military use of the facility” (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, July 25). However, asked if the administration had pressed Islamabad to guarantee it would not use the reactor to produce plutonium for atomic bombs, Snow said, “Not that I’m aware of,” the Associated Press reported yesterday (Paul Garwood, Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, July 24). Pakistan did not deny reports about the new reactor, which when finished could produce 200 kilograms or more of weapon-grade plutonium each year. “This ought to be no revelation to anyone, because Pakistan is a nuclear-weapons state,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said yesterday. She added that Pakistani officials “do not want an arms race in this region.” Weapons experts, however, said yesterday that a Pakistani nuclear expansion would push other countries in the region to make similar efforts. “There are makings of a vigorous competition in fissile material production in South Asia — between India and Pakistan in the first instance but also China as well,” said Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It would be one thing if we were talking just about well-secured nuclear bombs. A larger concern is the greater amounts of fissile material, which create more opportunities for terrorists to get their hands on it.” “We lack imagination if we think that this is no big deal,” Sokolski said (Warrick, Washington Post, July 25).
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