Get ready for limited nuclear warfare:
Powell Seeks Answers on Pakistan Nukes
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
NEW DELHI, India - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday he will ask Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf this week whether Pakistani officials aided rogue scientist A. Q. Khan in leaking nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Powell also waded into the growing U.S. political dispute over American companies sending jobs overseas, asking India to help create more jobs in the United States by opening its markets to more U.S. exports. But he said that was not a precondition for the continued outsourcing of American jobs to India.
"There is no quid pro quo here," Powell told reporters after discussing the sticky subject with Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha.
On Pakistan, Powell said he would ask Pakistan's president about the black market nuclear network headed by Khan.
"We can't be satisfied until this entire network is gone, branch and root," Powell said. He later met with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Seeking to cut costs, companies from the United States and other Western countries have hired about 170,000 workers in India for jobs such as payroll accounting, telemarketing and customer support services.
Powell said that despite job losses in the United States, outsourcing will continue.
"These kinds of dislocations will take place and we have to minimize these dislocations and provide more opportunities for workers," he said.
Sinha said the two sides agreed to discuss the situation further.
"We will not allow this or any other issue to create any misunderstanding between us," Sinha said.
Powell said the U.S. response should not be to prevent American firms from exporting jobs but to train young Americans in skills needed by the rest of the world.
Khan, a national hero in Pakistan for helping it become the first Islamic country with nuclear weapons, appeared on television seven weeks ago and disclosed his role in selling nuclear secrets to foreign governments. He said he was solely responsible — an assertion that has been greeted with widespread disbelief.
Musharraf has told U.S. officials that the Pakistani government was not in league with Khan's black market operation.
But Powell said he wondered whether individual officials collaborated with Khan. The question, he said, is "who else was involved in that network, was involved within past Pakistani governments or anything that might be taking place of a continuing nature."
Musharraf fueled suspicion about complicity of Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies in Khan's operation when he pardoned the scientist 24 hours after his confession. The White House then said that Pakistani officials had broken up the network.
As for U.S. relations with India, Sinha said ties have never been better in more than 50 years of Indian independence.
The most obvious breakthrough was a U.S.-Indian agreement reached in January to increase technology cooperation, permitting U.S. exports of sensitive civil nuclear and civilian space equipment. In return, India agreed to strengthen its own controls on the export of sensitive technology to other countries.
Powell took a break from his official talks here in late afternoon when he fielded questions from Indian teenagers for a program to be aired on ND-TV, a local station.
One questioner drew applause from his peers when he suggested that the United States was being hypocritical in continuing to possess nuclear weapons while demanding that other nations foreswear such armaments.
Powell said the U.S. arsenal has diminished sharply since his days as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the early 1990's when the country's nuclear repository numbered 28,000 weapons.
"I hope for the day when no one has nuclear weapons because no one has a need for them," Powell said. "But they can't all suddenly go away unfortunately because there is still the requirement for a deterrent."
Iran has sold nuclear weapons technology to Syria. Libya has sold the same to various African States prior to its capitulation to the US. North Korea has confirmed its' nuclear weapons capability. Evidence through intelligence sources in Europe, Britain, and the United States indicates that certain terrorist groups have in their possession numerous small portable nuclear weapons and they intend to use them in the very near future. Each such weapon is capable of destroying at least ten city blocks in any major city in the world and is no larger than a briefcase.
International intelligence experts are searching for answers as to when and where such weapons might be used. This is no longer a problem of US national security, it is a matter of international security and needs to be addressed by the United Nations Security Council immediately.
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