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Pakistan-Saudi
Arabia Deal on Nuclear Technology for Oil
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
UPI Editor at Large
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a
secret agreement on nuclear cooperation, an unimpeachable source
said on Monday, October 20.
"It will be vehemently denied
by both countries," added this ranking Pakistani source known
to this correspondent for more than a decade as a knowledgeable
insider, "but future events will confirm that Pakistan has
agreed to provide KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) with the wherewithal
for a nuclear deterrent."
In
a lightning, hastily arranged, 26-hour "state visit"
in Islamabad, Crown Prince Abdullah Abdul Aziz, Saudi Arabia's
de facto ruler, flew across the Arabian Sea with an entourage
of 200, including Foreign Minister Prince Saud and several Cabinet
ministers. The pro-American Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan,
who is next in line to succeed to the throne after Abdullah, was
not part of the delegation.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
met Abdullah at the airport and saw him off Sunday night with
a 21-gun salute.
In Washington, Mohammed Sadiq, Pakistan's
deputy chief of mission, said Monday the report about Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia reaching agreement on nuclear cooperation was
"totally wrong."
"This is against our policy,"
Sadiq told UPI. "Pakistan would never proliferate its nuclear
technology. It's a very clear policy. This was not even discussed
in the talks we held with the Saudis in Islamabad this week. It
was not even on the agenda. It is out of the question."
The Saudi Embassy in Washington did
not immediately comment on the report. A joint Pakistani-Saudi
communiqué posted on the embassy's Web site concerning
Abdullah's visit to Islamabad mentioned only an agreement for
"the maximum utilization of the existing economic potential
of the two countries." There was no mention of military cooperation,
nuclear or conventional.
The CIA believes that Pakistan already
exported nuclear know-how to North Korea in exchange for missile
technology. Last year, a Pakistani C-130 was spotted by satellite
loading North Korean missiles at Pyongyang airport. Pakistan said
this was a straight purchase for cash and denied a nuclear quid
pro quo.
This correspondent and the chief
of staff of the North Korean Air Force stayed at the same Islamabad
hotel in May 2001.
"Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,"
the Pakistani source explained, "see a world that is moving
from non-proliferation to proliferation of nuclear weapons."
Pakistan, under the late dictator
Gen. Zia ul-Haq decided to pursue the nuclear option following
India's first nuclear test in 1974. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
is now estimated at between 35 and 60 weapons.
The Sunni Saudis have concluded that
nothing will deter Shiite Iran from continuing its quest for nuclear
weapons. Pakistan, on the other hand, is openly concerned about
the recent armaments agreement between India, its nuclear rival,
and Israel, a long-time nuclear power whose inventory is estimated
at between 200 and 400 weapons. Iran and India, located on either
side of Pakistan, have also signed a strategic agreement whose
aim is regarded with suspicion in Islamabad.
Pakistani
Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali is scheduled to fly to Tehran
later this week to sound out Iranian leaders on the reasons for
the defense deal with New Delhi.
To
counter what Pakistani and Saudi leaders regard as a multi regional
threats, they have decided quietly to move ahead with a two-way
exchange -- free or cheap oil for nuclear know-how and expertise.
Pakistani pilots have been employed
as contract pilots for the Royal Saudi Air Force for the past
30 years. Several hundred thousand Pakistani workers are employed
by the Gulf states, both as skilled and unskilled workers, and
their remittances are a hard currency boon for the Pakistani Treasury.
In their private talks, according
to the United Press International source, Abdullah and Musharraf
also discussed the possibility of Pakistan supplying troops, not
to Iraq, but to the kingdom. Abdullah can see that the world's
largest oil reserves look increasingly vulnerable over the next
10 years.
By mutual agreement, U.S. forces
withdrew from Saudi Arabia earlier this year to relocate across
the border in the tiny oil sheikhdom of Qatar. Saudi officials
also remind their interlocutors that a closed meeting -- later
well publicized -- of the U.S. Defense Policy Board in 2002 listened
to an expert explain, with a 16-slide presentation, why and how
the United States should seize and occupy Saudi oilfields in the
country's eastern province.
Richard Perle was then the chairman
of the Pentagon-funded Defense Policy Board. Later in 2002, he
resigned the chairmanship following a conflict with his business
interests, but he remains a member of the influential panel.
Perle is also known throughout the
Middle East as one of the key architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom
and a former strategic adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu while the
latter was Israel's prime minister.
The denials of any secret nuclear
agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the source said,
"must be seen in the same context as Iranian denials about
its own nuclear weapons plans."
Prior
to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, along
with the United Arab Emirates, were the only countries that recognized
and aided Afghanistan's Taliban regime that had been educated
in Pakistan's madrassahs (Koranic schools). Taliban is now resurgent
along the mountainous regions that straddle the Pakistan-Afghan
border. Pakistani and U.S. Special Forces have been working the
area in tandem since last summer to flush out Taliban and Al-Qaeda
high altitude hideouts.
Pakistani
officials are also fearful that the Bush administration will leave
them in the lurch after Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Lladen has been
killed or captured. They also speculate about what the policy
would be in the event of a Democratic Party victory in the 2004
U.S. elections.
To
this day, the Saudi clergy continues to fund Pakistan's madrassahs
that are a substitute for the country's non-existent national
education system. The only schools outside madrassahs are expensive
private institutions. Pakistan, with a crushing defense burden,
only spends 1.7 percent of GDP on education (vs. 8 percent in
India and 16.5 percent in the United States).
Some 12,000 Koranic schools provide
free room and board to some 700,000 Pakistani boys (ages 6 to
16) where they are taught to read and write in Urdu and Arabic
and recite the Koran by heart. No other disciplines are practiced,
but students are proselytized with anti-American, anti-Israeli
and anti-Indian propaganda. By the time they graduate, the majority
is convinced that becoming a jihadi, or holy warrior, is the only
way to block America's alleged plans to destroy Islam.
Musharraf,
in a milestone speech three months before Sept. 11, 2001, denounced
the danger of these schools and urged syllabus reform. "We
are producing terrorists," he warned at the time.
But all attempts at reform have been
blocked by the mullahs with the support of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
-- a coalition of the six major politico-religious parties --
that now governs two of Pakistan's four provinces.
Musharraf
has opted for appeasement of the MMA rather than confrontation.
At the state banquet for Saudi Arabia's Abdullah, the principal
MMA chieftains were invited and attended. The two traditional
mainstream parties were not present. They were pointedly left
off the guest list.
