>> APRIL 28 2004...
North Korea Freedom Day
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
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We need your help to promote human rights in North Korea and make North Korea Freedom Day more than just an event - we would like to make real freedom for North Koreans a reality!
http://www.nkfreedom.org/
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Confronting Evil: North Korea Freedom Day
Chuck Colson (archive)
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/chuckcolson/cc20040405.shtml
April 5, 2004 | Print | Send
In 1992, a North Korean television station aired a show that had a character singing a popular South Korean song.
Ji Hae Nam, who was part of the propaganda arm of North Korea's Workers Party, learned the catchy tune. Months later she was overheard singing the song and was arrested. Detained in a prison awaiting trial, she was beaten and sexually abused by the guards.
Then she was sentenced to three years of "rehabilitation-through-labor" at a brutal prison camp--all this for singing a South Korean song, or as the charge read, "disrupting the socialist order."
There are more than 200,000 prisoners in just five of the twelve North Korean Auschwitz-like camps. Conditions at those camps include systematic torture, arbitrary and cruel treatment of prisoners, extreme deprivation and starvation, and back-breaking forced labor that is so dangerous that accidents leading to disfigurement and death are commonplace.
One former prisoner reports, "At the camp, I witnessed public executions, forced labor, and other inhumane atrocities. A new prisoner in the North Korean political prison camps is taught not to consider themselves as human beings. The prisoners cannot complain of beatings or even murders. Even the children are subject to forced labor, and about one-third of them die of malnutrition and heavy labor."
Meanwhile, the Stalinist regime led by Kim Jong Il keeps itself in power through illegal arms sales, counterfeiting, and narcotics production and trafficking.
In addition, while North Korea receives more food aid than any other nation, more than 4 million North Koreans have starved to death since 1995, including those who have died in the camps. Why? Because food aid is diverted into military stockpiles and into gourmet delicacies, fine wines and liquor, and other luxury items for Kim and members of his elite.
In short, North Korea has what is probably the worst human rights record in the world. Because of the extreme isolation of North Korea , we only guessed at the atrocities until about two years ago. Now as a result of North Korea 's economic relationships beyond the Soviet bloc and a large enough group of refugees and escapees, the ugly truth is out.
In response, the Wilberforce Forum became a founding member of the North Korea Freedom Coalition in order "to bring freedom to the North Korean people and to ensure that the human rights component of U.S. and world policy toward North Korea receives priority attention."
On April 28, 2004 , the Coalition will sponsor "North Korea Freedom Day" here in Washington, D.C. The program includes a rally at the Capitol, congressional hearings, speakers, and music. Participants including North Korean defectors will also lobby on behalf of the North Korea Human Rights Act, a bill that seeks to bring about peaceful changes in North Korea on behalf of people who have suffered too much for too long. Call us here at BreakPoint (1-877-322-5527) or visit www.nkfreedom.org for more details about how you can be involved.
This is another example of how Christians need to take the lead in human rights, connecting a biblical understanding of humanity with practical and political efforts to confront intolerable evil.
For further reading and information:
Visit the website of the North Korea Freedom Coalition for more information on North Korea Freedom Day and other ways you can help. Also see its fact sheet on North Korea .
Jeff Jacoby, " The ordeal of a North Korean in Canada ," International Herald Tribune (from the Boston Globe), 8 March 2004 .
"Christians under dark reign of Kim Jong Il ," Asia News, 28 February 2004 .
Rich Lowry, " Out of the Dark Age ," National Review Online, 10 September 2003.
Read the Statement of Principles for U.S.-North Korean Relations signed by Charles Colson, William Bennett, Nicholas Eberstadt, Robert George, Michael Horowitz, and many others.
Kate Fowler, " Rescue the Perishing, Care for the Dying ," BreakPoint WorldView, January/February 2004.
Visit BreakPoint's resource and fact page on North Korea for more information.
Stand Today also provides other ideas for helping persecuted Christians abroad, including North Koreans .
Nina Shea, In the Lion's Den: Persecuted Christians and What the Western Church Can Do About It (Broadman and Holman, 1997).
Gary Haugen, The Good News about Injustice (InterVarsity, 1999).
John Stott, Human Rights and Human Wrongs (Baker Book House, 1999).
Chuck Colson is founder and chairman of BreakPoint Online, a Townhall.com member group.
?2004 BreakPoint Online
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Christians under dark reign of Kim Jong Il
http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=428
Rome (AsiaNews) - During the Beijing summit meetings regarding the North Korean nuclear program requests from many exiled North Koreans were ignored. They had asked to discuss the serious violations human rights and religious freedom occurring in their homeland.
The situation experienced by Christians in North Korea is emblematic of the brutal human rights conditions found in the country. News that manages to leak out of the country speaks of violent persecutions and tight government control of religious freedom and worship.
Such news comes form Christians and political dissidents who have managed to escape abroad, as well as from tourists, government employees, foreign journalists and Christian delegations, whose mobility is limited and mostly restricted to the capital of Pyongyang and immediate surrounding areas.
According to the testimony of a North Korean refugee reported by Forum 18 News Service, some elderly Christians were killed in a small town on the Chinese border. The motive for their killings, which occurred in the year 2000, was because they had refused to renounce their faith. Former North Korean citizens and prisoners, like Soon-Ok Lee, have said that Christians in reeducation camps and jails are treated worse than other prisoners.
Due to the reign of terror which has existed in North Korean, persons living in nearby regions have only discovered after ten years that they shared the same faith. Human Rights Without Frontiers says that in order to escape from police repression Christians meet secretly in groups of ten, often with members of the same family.
In recent years Pyongyang has grown worried about "spiritual pollution" of North Koreans and has attempted to persecute such "corrupt" citizens living abroad. In China, for example, where there are 100,000-300,000 North Korean refugees, Pyongyang has obtained support from Beijing to hunt the "fugitives" down.
A Japanese human rights activist has revealed that the North Korean government built a fake church in China (in Yanji, Jilin province), just 20 km from the border. Chinese police arrested many North Korean refugees there and had them sent back to North Korea. During long interrogations, North Korean government authorities ask the repatriated refugees what kind of contact they've had with South Korean missionaries working in China, if they read the Bible or attend church services. Those they who admit to contact with missionaries or any other religious affiliations and activities are imprisoned and condemned to death. The church's Protestant pastor, as some reports indicate, is being blackmailed by Pyongyang which holds his family hostage.
The situation is not much better in North Korea. In the capital there are only 2 Protestant churches in addition to one priestless Catholic church and a new Orthodox center of worship. Many foreigners who have attended religious services do not believe that the celebrations and faithful are "fake" or dramatized by the government, but all noted that sermons were filled with many political references. Others have said that government propaganda is found to exist within these churches and are not in constant use.
There are no exact figures on the number of faithful and places of worship existing in North Korea. In July 2002, at the request of the UN Commission on Human Rights, the North Korean government released brief and evasive information on the status of Christians living in the country. In terms of Catholic numbers authorities said there were 800 faithful in the country with 2 "centers of public worship" and one sanctuary.
The governments said there were around 12,000 Protestants in North Korea with 2 churches, "500 centers of worship for families" and 20 pastors. In Jan. 2004 an exponent of Baptist Church-run Cornerstone Ministries told the US Commission on Religious Freedom that there were 100,000 Protestant North Koreans.
According to certain estimates there are about 100,000 Christians out of a total population of 24 million in North Korea, of which 12,000 are Protestants and 4000 Catholics. It is said that since communists took over the government in 1953, some 300,000 Christians have disappeared and there are no longer priests or nuns in the country, all likely killed during times of persecution. (MR)
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Rescue the Perishing, Care for the Dying
The Justice We Must Pursue
http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/Columns/Guest_Features/20043/Rescue_the_Perishing,_Care_for_the_Dying.htm
By Kate Fowler
March 18, 2004
This article first appeared in the January/February 2004 issue of BreakPoint WorldView magazine. Subscribe today or order a gift subscription!
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.--Edmund Burke
Coming from a university setting where choosing dairy over soymilk at the independent, locally-owned latte shop suggested an alarming lack of character, I am well-acquainted with at least one, limited, understanding of social justice. Yet defining justice in terms of "compost vs. recycling" or "bike lanes vs. HOV lanes" falls far short of our calling as Christians to pursue and uphold true and lasting justice among people around the world.
The Christian's call to pursue justice emphasizes the dignity of man--a concern for the other--rather than seeking our own individual rights and "entitlements." It is critical to understand this call, given the countless, atrocious human rights violations around the world. For example, North Korea is deemed by many to be the worst human rights situation on the globe today. Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are imprisoned in forced labor camps; thousands more are desperately seeking asylum because of its famine and injustice. Their well being should matter to us because seeking and upholding justice is a fundamental principle of the Christian life.
In Isaiah 1:17, we are called to "seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow." In James 1:27 we read, "Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Isaiah 61:1 says, "He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners." Thus, we are bound by the eternal, universal law of our Creator to administer justice and uphold human dignity.
Nonetheless, many evangelicals dismiss human rights initiatives as a political construct of the ideological left. There is merit in being cautious about social issues. As John Stott warns in his book Human Rights and Human Wrongs: "We will be wise not to blunder unprepared into the minefield of social ethics." He recalls a statement by the late John Mackay: "Commitment without reflection is fanaticism in action, though reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action."
In his book The Good News about Injustice, Gary Haugen writes:
To say that God is a God of justice is to say that He is a God who cares about the right exercise of power or authority. God is the ultimate power and authority in the universe, so justice occurs when power and authority are exercised in conformity with His standards . . . justice occurs on earth when power and authority between people are exercised in conformity with God's standards of moral excellence.
Given Haugen's definition of justice on earth as an exercise of authority "between people," it is no coincidence that justice and injustice are most pronounced at the point in which human lives are touched. It is equally understandable why collective "social justice" is often co-opted into discussions about human rights. One of the most fundamental principles in God's universal law is that man is created in God's image. As such, we are endowed with a unique capacity and responsibility to be in relationship with God, with others, and with the earth.
It is important to keep in mind that, as Stott writes, "human rights are not unlimited rights, as if we were free to be and do absolutely anything we like. They are limited to what is compatible with being the human person God made us and meant us to be." Thus, human rights must always address, honor, and uphold man's freedom and responsibility as God's image-bearer. And evangelicals in recent years have made great progress in advocating this understanding of human rights.
Human Rights Today
Unlike other monuments that decorate the National Mall in Washington, D.C., marking man's victories, the United States Holocaust museum marks man's depravity in a fallen world. But it tells only one story, marks only one incidence, talks only about the past. Meanwhile, the same evil persists among nations and in individual lives around the world today.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion article, Oklahoma University professor Allen Hertzke drew public attention to contemporary atrocities. He also highlighted and defended the critical role evangelical activism has played in bringing justice and relieving oppression. He described the "massacres, ethnic cleansing, and enslavement by a despotic regime" endured by Christians in Sudan for more than twenty years and applauded evangelical leaders, laymen, and students for their role in the passage of the Sudan Peace Act in 2002. "This story of human rights activism offers one example among many of a new generation of evangelicals quite comfortable in forming coalitions with those they may oppose on some hot-button domestic concerns," Hertzke writes. When it comes to life-and-death issues, differing ideological stands diminish in relevance, and people come together to--as the hymn by Fanny Crosby goes--"rescue the perishing, care for the dying."
Hertzke also highlighted the evangelical-led, bipartisan coalitions that played a dominant and critical role in the passage of: the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998; the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2002, to protect women and children from the multi-billion dollar global sex trafficking industry; the Prison Rape Elimination Act signed by the president last September, to protect U.S. prisoners from rape and sexual assault; and the current initiative by evangelicals in coalition with other groups to bring freedom to the North Korean people under legislation called The Korean Freedom Act, which Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) introduced last fall.
The North Korean Freedom Act currently before Congress includes policy provisions that:
promote family reunification between North and South Koreans;
ensure direct aid and humanitarian relief reaches those in need;
protect refugees by amending and strengthening U.S. and UN immigration and refugee policies;
provide information to North Koreans by increasing the number of radios, newspapers, and democratic broadcasts;
engage South Korea in protecting its neighbor;
and raise public awareness about the situation in North Korea .
This initiative provides evangelicals with an incredible opportunity to pursue justice for North Korean citizens. Included by President Bush as part of the "Axis of Evil," the North Korean government has grossly abused its authority, oppressing its people in a land of darkness.
A Dark Country
Physically, North Korea is dark because economic disaster and chronic misuse of resources by its dictator, the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, is so extensive that even in the capital city of Pyongyang, power is cut off entirely at intervals throughout the day. The dire economic conditions have also caused more than 4 million North Koreans to die of starvation or malnutrition since 1995, according to humanitarian relief experts. One North Korean, Chung Goo Nam, who successfully escaped over the Chinese border, recalls, "I remember I went to a warehouse [in North Korea] to catch rats. I caught two rats but they were so thin and with very little meat. One of the things that surprises me in China is that the rats are so fat and big."
North Korea is also a land of spiritual darkness. Its systematic oppression of North Koreans through propaganda and a complex system of government-run gulags is unsurpassed in the world today. Soon Ok Lee became a Christian after observing the faith of persecuted Christians in the prison camp where she labored for six years. She recalls her own suffering once she became a Christian:
You can't imagine the water torture. They forcefully poured ten liters of water into my body. They used a specially designed kettle and inserted the spout into my throat so it was wide open. When I resumed my consciousness, my stomach was full of water. While it was full, the guards put a wide wooden board on my belly and trampled on it to make me vomit. They repeated this procedure several times. Water gushed from my mouth, nose, genitals, and anus. Their twisted faces are bound in my memory as those of wolves and demons.
Soon Ok Lee was imprisoned for the so-called "political crime" of failing to use government funds to pay for her supervisor's personal dry cleaning. Her son and husband were also punished for her alleged crime, and though she was able to reunite with her son after he served five years in a forced labor camp, her husband is still missing. This systematic imposition of guilt-by-association punishment for up to three generations and the frequent application of lifetime prison sentences are both identified as "phenomenon of repression" in a recent report by the U.S. Committee on North Korean Human Rights.
Modest estimates indicate at least 200,000 North Koreans are housed in government-run gulags. But it is likely that as many as a million or more are incarcerated in camps and colonies that have not yet been accounted for, as Suzanne Scholte of the Defense Forum Foundation and other human rights experts attest. Each camp spans up to twenty miles in length and fifteen to twenty miles in width. Prisoners are forced to perform hard labor, such as mining, logging, textile manufacturing, and brickmaking under dreadfully harsh conditions. Prisoners typically work up to twelve hours a day on a daily food ration of eighty grams of cornmeal, lightly salted. "Political crimes" that have resulted in imprisonment include humming a South Korean or American pop song, owning a Bible, complaining about a lack of food, or criticizing the government. North Korea 's oppression depends heavily on its isolation from the rest of the world, giving its leaders the power to control the minds and lives of its people. "We believed unreservedly that we lived in paradise on earth," former presidential bodyguard Lee Young-kuk said of North Korea .
Action and Inaction
Human rights challenges provide evangelicals with a valuable faith lesson. As Gary Haugen recognizes, "In the end the battle against oppression stands or falls on the battlefield of hope." Christians rejoice in the knowledge that their faith alone offers sufficient hope to account for the suffering of the world--Christ's redemption and promise of restoration ensure that. Yet even with the progress of evangelical activism, in the policy realm it is still too often Christians who abandon these issues to the political left.
Stott explores this phenomenon in a section titled "The paradox of our humanness" in Human Rights and Human Wrongs: "We human beings have a unique dignity as creatures made in God's image and a unique depravity as sinners under His judgment. The former gives us hope, the latter places limits on our expectation." He illustrates this principle as the tendency of Christians to assimilate too easily to either a "right" or "left" political ideology, both of which inevitably distort the true balance and tension of our call to live God-honoring lives. "Each [extreme political ideology] attracts because it emphasizes a truth about human beings," he writes, "either the need to give free play to their creative abilities or the need to protect them from injustice. Each repels because it fails to take with equal seriousness the complementary truth. Both can be liberating. Both can also be oppressive."
While this observation affirms the legitimate tension Christians often feel when it comes to pursuing justice through tangible programs, it does not in any way excuse Christians from thoughtful political action and awareness. Instead of resisting this tension, he argues, by embracing the truth of this paradox and choosing instead to live within that tension, Christians can better learn how to view justice and human rights policy not simply as a means to an end, but as a tool to better inform and cultivate an understanding of God's call to seek justice.
In December 2003, Kate Fowler , government affairs specialist for the Wilberforce Forum, traveled to Boliviato minister to impoverished children and prostitutes. She holds a bachelor's in journalism from the Universityof Coloradoat Boulder.
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The ordeal of a North Korean in Canada
Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe
Monday, March 8, 2004
Fleeing Kim's tyranny
BOSTON If you have ever started to emerge from one nightmare only to find yourself plunged into a new one, you will find the ordeal of Ri Song Dae frighteningly familiar.
In August 2001, Ri entered Canada with his wife and their 6-year-old son, Chang Il. They were defectors from the monstrous dictatorship in North Korea and had come to Canada to seek asylum.
For 10 years, Ri had been a low-level trade functionary, periodically sent abroad to purchase foodstuffs. He had long known of the savage brutality of Kim Jong Il's regime, of course; no government official could fail to be aware of it. What finally prompted him to flee was seeing the horrible treatment meted out to escaped North Koreans who were caught and returned. According to human rights monitors, that treatment includes humiliation and torture, typically followed by slow starvation and slave labor in a prison camp - or public execution.
Ri filed a formal claim for refugee status for himself and Chang Il four months after arriving in Canada, but by then his second nightmare had begun. His wife, browbeaten by her Japanese parents for her "betrayal," attempted to commit suicide, then agreed to leave her husband and son and return to North Korea. She was executed in April 2002. Ri's father was executed as well, in keeping with the North Korean policy of ruthlessly punishing not only "criminals," but also their parents and children.
On Sept. 12, 2003, more than two years after Ri's plea for asylum was filed, Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board issued its ruling. It was an Orwellian stunner.
A board member, Bonnie Milliner, ruled that Ri's young son was entitled to stay in Canada, since he would face severe persecution if he were returned to Pyongyang. But Ri's appeal for refugee protection was denied, even though Milliner agreed that "he would face execution on return to North Korea." Why would Canada send a man back to his certain death? Because, Milliner wrote, "there are serious reasons for considering that (Ri) has committed crimes against humanity by virtue of his longstanding membership in the Government of North Korea."
In other words, Ri was deemed complicit in crimes against humanity solely because he had held a government job. Milliner acknowledged that there was no evidence he had committed atrocities. But Ri knew of the regime's savagery yet waited 10 years to defect. To the immigration board, that added up to a case for sending him back to be killed.
If the board's decision were to stand, Ri would be sent off to die, and his 6-year-old would be an orphan. His prospects grew even bleaker on Feb. 20, when Milliner's ruling was upheld by Canada's citizenship and immigration ministry. Canadians express pride in their country's humanitarian values, but it has been hard to detect any of those values as this case has moved through the Canadian bureaucracy.
Fortunately, Ri received a last-minute reprieve. On Wednesday, Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan granted him permission to stay in Canada indefinitely, since his life would be in danger if he were deported. Her decision effectively overruled the earlier decrees. Ri's long nightmare may at last be over.
Back in North Korea, however, there are no happy endings. News media coverage of Kim Jong Il's government has been focused on its illegal nuclear weapons program and its proliferation of missile technology. But even more ghastly is the suffering it inflicts on its own people.
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday on the use of political prisoners as chemical weapons guinea pigs. A senior North Korean chemist who escaped in 2002 described a testing chamber that was outfitted with a large window and a sound system so scientists could see and hear the victims' reactions when they were sprayed with the lethal poison.
"One man was scratching desperately," the defector testified. "He scratched his neck, his chest. . . . He was covered in blood. ... I kept trying to look away. I knew how toxic these chemicals were in even small doses." It took, he said, three agonizing hours for each man to die.
When I wrote in The Boston Globe last month about North Korea's concentration camps and gas chambers, many readers wrote to ask: What can I do? The first and most important step is to learn more. Three excellent sources of information on North Korea are The Chosun Journal (www.chosunjournal.com), the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (www.nkhumanrights.or.kr), and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (www.hrnk.org). They should be the first stop for anyone for whom "never again" is not just an empty slogan.
Ri Song Dae and his son are safe, but 22 million North Koreans remain trapped, at the mercy of the most evil government on earth. Learn what is happening to them. Cry out in protest. This is not a time for silence.
Jeff Jacoby's column runs regularly in The Boston Globe.
Copyright ? 2003 The International Herald Tribune
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Statement of Principles for U.S.-North Korean Relations
A repressive, powerfully armed communist regime headed by an odious despot creates a crisis in relations with the U.S. and the world's democracies. It does so by threatening nuclear war if the world's noncommunist powers fail to accede to its demands. The crisis manufactured by the regime results from its acute internal crisis of legitimacy and survival, and from the mounting collapse of its economy. The regime demands formal negotiations leading to economic assistance and broad support for its internal security. In particular, the regime demands formal U.S. and international recognition of the permanence of the borders under its control.
Faced with strong political pressures both at home and from U.S. allies to negotiate over the regime's "peace for security" demand, the president of the United States agrees to do so.
But the president takes a simple additional step; he broadens the negotiating agenda to make the regime's human-rights practices a legitimate item for discussion. Eager to begin negotiations over its "political-security basket" of demands, eager to establish trade relations and receive economic support, unable to sustain the public position that its internal security depends on the denial of basic human rights, and confident of its ability to repress human rights once its economy and security receive outside support, the regime accepts the president's negotiating proposal.
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This scenario is neither contemporary nor fanciful. It describes events in which the dictator was Leonid Brezhnev not Kim Jong Il, and the regime the Soviet Union, not North Korea.
History will record President Nixon's 1972 agenda-broadening decision as one of the wisest of modern history--one that converted a blustering threat from a nuclear-armed regime into a major cause of its implosion. The decision trumped and negated the false but damaging charges then being made that the U.S. was indifferent to the specter of war with the Soviet Union. It placed on the bargaining table more than the appeasement-or-war, red-or-dead "choices" the Soviets sought to posit. It rescued the world's democracies from being defensive respondents to crisis and helped bring about widespread liberation.
Beginning with the Soviet Union's initial agreement to a Helsinki process, the Brezhnev demands culminated in the Helsinki Agreement of 1975. The Soviet Union gained what it had primarily sought, and what proved meaningless: formal recognition of the permanence of its Eastern European borders. Yet what it gave in return--formal acknowledgment of the legitimacy of such rights as the free exchange of people, open borders and family reunification--opened the floodgates of dissent and led to its collapse.
The animating insight of Helsinki was that by publicly raising human rights issues to high priority levels, the U.S. would set forces in motion that would undermine the legitimacy of the communist empire. And so it turned out to be.
At the nongovernmental level, such monitoring groups as Czechoslovakia's Charter 77, Poland's Solidarity and Russia's Helsinki Monitors emerged from the Helsinki Agreement--often fragile, frequently persecuted, but nonetheless real and, as we know today, deathly potent to their totalitarian targets. At the governmental level, Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe review mechanisms gave U.S. negotiators a means of achieving the release of significant numbers of named political prisoners. As a result, dissident artists and cultural leaders, rebellious students, Jewish refuseniks, Pentecostal ministers and other gulag victims became brave icons of hope within and without the Soviet Union. Their freedom liberated others to challenge the regime's authority.
The "rights basket" of Helsinki issues thwarted the Soviet Union's efforts to create and exploit great divisions within the West over how best to respond to nuclear blackmail. They also unified the Free World by illuminating to its people the fundamental values they shared.
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Confronted today with significantly less potent threats from Kim Jong Il than those made by Brezhnev, the world's democracies are nonetheless faced, as they were in the early 1970s, with the zero-sum trap of either rewarding North Korea for violating its prior commitments or appearing indifferent to its threats of nuclear war.
Based on the lessons of Helsinki, we strongly believe that the U.S. must neither directly nor indirectly license a fragile and oppressive Pyongyang regime to commit heightened atrocities against its own people in exchange for yet another promise not to pose nuclear threats to the world order. We also believe that the U.S. can enter into formal negotiations with Pyongyang in a manner that promotes American and universal ideals and creates unity with our allies.
With that in mind, and acknowledging the complexity of all foreign policy decisions, we call upon President Bush to take the following steps:
Respond positively to Pyongyang's demand to negotiate with the U.S. over exchanging monitored renunciation of nuclear weaponry for a U.S. commitment of military "nonaggression"--but on condition that Pyongyang agrees to negotiate over allowing institutions that promote such human rights as the free exchange of people, religious liberty, open borders and family reunification.
Express willingness to negotiate an "economic basket" of issues in which the U.S. will consider lifting trade sanctions and offering economic assistance--but on condition that Pyongyang takes monitored steps that satisfy the president's newly announced "millennial standards" making U.S. foreign aid contingent on the adoption of market-based and rule-of-law reforms.
Announce, in simple, stark terms, that the central U.S. objective toward North Korea is the promotion of democracy so that its people can enjoy the same rights and progress enjoyed by the people of South Korea.
Significantly enhance U.S. public diplomacy toward North Korea. This can be achieved through steps including:
Greatly expanding the current, scandalously inadequate four-hour-a-day Korean-language Radio Free Asia broadcasts;
Investigating, compiling and disseminating the human-rights abuses of the regime through expanded satellite photography of gulags and broadly available computerized databanks; and
Paying special attention to the regime's religious persecution through expanded funding for investigations by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.
Give priority status to the plight of North Korean refugees and senior-level defectors. This can be achieved through many steps, including:
Pressing the Russian and, most particularly, Chinese governments to allow the reasonable processing of the refugee claims of North Korean escapees;
Strongly insisting that the U.N. High Commission for Refugees should invoke its express powers under a Dec. 1, 1995, China-UNHCR treaty to obtain binding international arbitration to resolve any dispute involving the failure of the Chinese government to give UNHCR personnel "at all times . . . unimpeded access to refugees."
Supporting the Brownback-Kennedy bill granting North Korean refugees the same Lautenberg Amendment rights to U.S. refugee status as are now provided to Cuban refugees;
Discreetly but actively encouraging senior-level defections by senior North Korean officials by aggressively countering the regime's disinformation campaign regarding the fate of post-collapse Soviet officials, and by offering financial support and amnesty for key defectors; and
Providing assurances to South Korea, China and Japan that the U.S. will assume a significant share of the financial costs of any collapse of the Pyongyang regime--thereby allaying a major if largely unacknowledged source of support for continuing the regime in power.
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The lessons of Helsinki allow the crisis now created by the Pyongyang regime to be seen as an opportunity for, not a threat to, the free world. They allow the U.S. to focus the current debate on the regime's policies of persecution and starvation and to the massive failure of its economic policies. They allow the president to strengthen democracy and human rights throughout the world, to strengthen the bonds of alliances now temporarily strained by efforts to portray the U.S. as indifferent to Korean peninsular peace, and to maintain his determination never to allow rogue regimes to benefit from threats or broken promises.
We believe that little is lost, and much gained, by immediately broadening negotiations with the Pyongyang regime to include the plight of those who live under its rule. As such, we call on the president to do so--in furtherance of historic American values, and the national interests of the U.S., its allies and the world at large.
Signed,
Leith Anderson William Bennett Charles Colson Nicholas Eberstadt Robert George Michael Horowitz Max Kampelman Penn Kemble Dianne Knippers Richard Land Richard Neuhaus Michael Novak Marvin Olasky Mark Palmer Nina Shea Radek Sikorski R. James Woolsey
This statement appeared in the Wall Street Journal on January 18, 2003.
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For further information:
BreakPoint Commentary No. 030129, "Chips Worth Bargaining For."
Stand Today offers many ways citizens can help persecuted Christians in North Korea and elsewhere. Also see BreakPoint's list of human rights organizations.
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Out of the Dark Age
A coalition floats a real Korean sunshine policy.
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry091003.asp
Will President Bush replicate one of Bill Clinton's worst foreign-policy failures?
The administration said last week that it will contemplate sending aid to North Korea before the nation has dismantled its nuclear program. At the end of this path is potentially the kind of deal Clinton cut, with Pyongyang gobbling up international goodies while, one way or the other, maintaining its weapons programs.
This approach will be celebrated by Bush's critics. It will allow them to bellow a delicious "told you so" about Clinton's Agreed Framework of 1994, casting it as the only realistic answer to the crisis, embraced by even the reluctant Bushies.
But there is another way in North Korea. A bipartisan coalition of conservatives, liberals, Christians, Korean Americans, and human-rights activists -- led by Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas -- is rising to promote an entirely different approach based on the premise that there can be no peace and security on the Korean peninsula without the collapse of the current regime in Pyongyang. The coalition's weapon in the struggle with the North is one of the most powerful the United States has -- the promise of freedom -- and it plans to wield it forcefully.
This will be considered inconvenient by South Korea. If there is a villain in the current Korean crisis besides the lunatic Kim Jong Il, it is Seoul. For the South Korean government, the worst threat isn't a totalitarian, nuclear-armed North, but the prospect of an enormous new line in its budget, with the fiscal strains that would come with the collapse of Pyongyang and reunification. South Korea thinks a good demilitarized zone makes for a good neighbor, even if the neighbor happens to be a prison camp.
South Korea calls its posture toward the North, in a perverse misnomer, "the sunshine policy" when it is really meant to keep the North plunged in darkness. The rising coalition wants a true sunshine policy, exposing the evil of the North, affording its people access to outside information, and offering the opportunity of escape.
A major bill that is set to be introduced in Congress would require the U.S. government to make reports on the North Korean human-rights situation, including releasing satellite photos of the gulag system, and to hold a series of hearings on persecution in North Korea. It would try to bring the outside world to the North, with extensive American radio broadcasting and the provision of transistor radios for North Koreans.
Importantly, the draft bill seeks to make it easier for North Koreans to leave the country. If North Koreans were allowed to vote with their feet, the Dear Leader would lose in a landslide. The model is Hungary and East Germany, where an immigration outflow in 1989 created the crisis that collapsed the Eastern Bloc.
There are an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 North Koreans already living in China. The bill would condition funding for the United Nations on its entering binding international arbitration with China over the status of North Korean refugees. China treats them as economic migrants who can be sent back to North Korea in the most brutal fashion possible, when they are really refugees who cannot be repatriated.
Meanwhile, U.S. immigration policy toward North Korea is shockingly stingy (if North Koreans were Mexicans, they would get much more generous treatment). The bill would make it possible for as many as 30,000 North Korean refugees to enter the United States this year, creating pressure -- by example -- on the South to honor its commitment to welcome North Korean refugees.
The bill's architects contemplate using an even more forceful stick: A provision would stipulate that South Korea gets no U.S. aid to handle the collapse in Pyongyang unless it has had a hand in helping bring it about. If all South Korea cares about is its budget, this at least should get its attention. And maybe one day again the South will understand that human rights, not bribes, is the answer in North Korea.
? 2003 by King Features Syndicate
-- Rich Lowry is author of the upcoming Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
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==========================================================================================
>> IRAQ...
Second Thinking
What I got wrong about Iraq.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, April 19, 2004, at 11:04 AM PT
At least there's no question about the flavor of the week. It's a scoop of regime-change second-thoughts, with a dash of "who lost Iraq by gaining it?" Colin Powell, who has never been wise before any event (he was for letting Bosnia slide and didn't want even to move an aircraft carrier on the warning--which he didn't believe--that Saddam was about to invade Kuwait), always has Bob Woodward at his elbow when he wants to be wise afterwards. Richard Clarke has never been asked any questions about his insistence that the United States stay away from Rwanda. Many of those who were opposed to any military intervention now tell us that they always thought it should have been at least twice as big.
To give an example of the latter school: E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post has just instructed his readers that Fallujah and the Sunni triangle would more likely have been under control the first time around, except that we refused the offer of help from the Turks. Dionne, whose politics are an etiolated version of the Dorothy Day/Michael Harrington Catholic-pacifist school, is the soft-Left's William Safire in this thirst for Turkish power. At the time, I thought it was impressive that the United States refused Turkey's arrogant pre-condition, which was a demand that Turkish troops be allowed into Iraqi Kurdistan. Apart from the fact that there was and is no threat from that quarter, such a concession would have negated our "regime change" claims.
Now we hear on all sides, including Lakhdar Brahimi of the United Nations, that de-Baathification was also a mistake. Can you imagine what the antiwar critics, and many Iraqis, would now be saying if the Baathists had been kept on? This point extends to Paul Bremer's decision to dissolve the Baathist armed forces. That could perhaps have been carried out with more tact, and in easier stages. But it was surely right to say that a) Iraq was the victim of a huge and parasitic military, which invaded externally and repressed internally; and b) that young Iraqi men need no longer waste years of their lives on nasty and stultifying conscription. Moreover, by making it impossible for any big-mouth brigadier or general to declare himself the savior of Iraq in a military coup, the United States also signaled that it would not wish to rule through military proxies (incidentally, this is yet another gross failure of any analogy to Vietnam, El Salvador, Chile, and all the rest of it).
In parallel with this kind of retrospective brilliance, we continue to hear from those whose heroic job it is to keep on exposing the open secret. Fresh bulletins continue to appear from the faction that knows the awful truth: Saddam's Iraq was considered a threat by some people even before Osama Bin Laden became famous. I still recommend Kenneth Pollack's book The Threatening Storm as the best general volume here. Published well before the war and by a member of the Clinton NSC whose pre-Kuwait warnings had been overruled by the first Bush administration, it openly said that continuing coexistence with Saddam Hussein had become impossible and that the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, made it thinkable at last to persuade public opinion that this was so. More than any other presentation, this prepared the ground for the intervention. I remember it being rather openly on sale and being considered the argument that you had to beat.
Pollack rested more of his case than he now finds comfortable on the threat from Iraqi WMD. That these used to be a threat is no more to be denied than the cheerful fact that we can now be sure that they no longer are. (And being sure is worth something, by the way, unless you would have preferred to take Saddam's word for it.) So, should it now be my own turn? What did I most get wrong? Hell, I'm not feeling masochistic today. But come on, Hitchens, the right-thinking now insist that you concede at least something.
The thing that I most underestimated is the thing that least undermines the case. And it's not something that I overlooked, either. But the extent of lumpen Islamization in Iraq, on both the Khomeinist and Wahhabi ends (call them Shiite and Sunni if you want a euphemism that insults the majority), was worse than I had guessed.
And this is also why I partly think that Colin Powell, as reported by Woodward, was right. He apparently asked the president if he was willing to assume, or to accept, responsibility for the Iraqi state and society. The only possible answer, morally and politically, would have been "yes." The United States had already made itself co-responsible for Iraqi life, first by imposing the sanctions, second by imposing the no-fly zones, and third by co-existing with the regime. (Three more factors, by the way, that make the Vietnam comparison utterly meaningless.) This half-slave/half-free compromise could not long have endured.
The antiwar Left used to demand the lifting of sanctions without conditions, which would only have gratified Saddam Hussein and his sons and allowed them to rearm. The supposed neutrals, such as Russia and France and the United Nations, were acting as knowing profiteers in a disgusting oil-for-bribes program that has now been widely exposed. The regime-change forces said, in effect: Lift the sanctions and remove the regime. But in the wasted decade of sanctions-plus-Saddam, a whole paranoid and wretched fundamentalist underclass was created and exploited by the increasingly Islamist propaganda of the Baath Party. This also helps explain the many overlooked convergences between the supposedly "secular" Baathists and the forces of jihad.
When fools say that the occupation has "united" Sunni and Shiite, they flatter the alliance between the proxies of the Iranian mullahs and the Saudi princes. And they ignore the many pleas from disputed and distraught towns, from Iraqis who beg not to be abandoned to these sadistic and corrupt riffraff. One might have seen this coming with greater prescience. But it would have made it even more important not to leave Iraq to the post-Saddam plans of such factions. There was no way around our adoption of Iraq, as there still is not. It's only a pity that the decision to intervene was left until so many years had been consumed by the locust.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a regular contributor to Slate. His most recent book is Blood, Class and Empire He is also the author of A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq.
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>> IRAQ ...""
Postwar Constitution-Building:
Comparing America's Situation with Iraq's Yields a Dismal Picture of Iraq's Likely Future
By EDWARD LAZARUS
elazarus@findlaw.com
----
Thursday, Apr. 15, 2004
The explosion of violence in Iraq has temporarily shifted the issue of "nation-building" off the front page. It has replaced that issue, instead, with the more pressing question of whether Iraq can be saved from utter chaos.
But assuming that the U.S.-led coalition can restore a semblance of order in the streets, the process of nation-building - its excruciating difficulty, and tantalizing hope - will regain its standing. In the end, that process will act as the ultimate test for whether history will judge the U.S. invasion as a wholesale disaster, albeit one mitigated by the removal of a terrible despot, or at least a partial success.
When this happens, a central focus will be the creation of a new Iraqi Constitution. Somehow this document, which is the subject of a raging debate, must provide the architecture for a democratic state that is hard even to imagine at the moment.
Rarely has a document had to bear such weight. With the disappearance of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as the raison d'etre for the war, the liberation of the Iraqi people and the creation of a model democratic state have become the Administration's chief justifications for U.S. involvement in Iraq. Naturally, a real working Constitution - not some Soviet-style parchment of extravagant but meaningless guarantees - is essential to the creation of such a democracy. Thus, the Iraqi nation's fate significantly depends on the success of the Iraqi Constitution's Framers.
With these stakes in mind, it seems worth comparing some of the challenges facing Iraq with those that faced the American colonies after our Revolutionary War. The results of this thought experiment - even if briefly indulged - are depressing indeed.
America's Experience: From the Revolution, to the Constitution
After the Revolution, the Founding Fathers faced four profound structural questions for the government they were redesigning through the Constitution -- the new document that would replace the Articles of Confederation, which had proved grossly inadequate.
First, the Constitution's Framers had to strengthen the federal government (which had proven too weak under the Articles), without unduly diminishing the power of individual states. Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government had had little power. But under the Constitution, things were very different.
In the Constitution, the Framers established a federal government of enumerated powers, with sufficient flexibility to meet whatever contingencies might arise. Meanwhile, the states retained significant authority over matters that did not require a uniform national approach.
Second, the Framers had to find an appropriate balance of power between the small states and the larger states. They solved this problem by devising a bicameral legislature with one chamber organized by state according to population and the other chamber providing equal representation of all states.
Third, the Framers needed to come up with a system of effective government that would not be overly dominated by either the executive or legislative branches. They managed this, as is familiar, through a careful "separation of powers" among three "co-equal" branches of government: the legislative, executive, and judicial.
And fourth, the Framers had to figure out how to deal with the problem of slavery and the large slave population that existed in the South. Here, they decided on a rather ignominious course - outlawing the slave trade after a substantial period of years, treating slaves as "three-fifths" of a person for determining state representation, and otherwise remaining silent on this potentially explosive subject.
How America's Framers Confronted Constitutional Challenges -- and Nearly Failed
None of this political balancing act came easily. But the Framers were inordinately fortunate to count among their number the wisest and most innovative minds - James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and many others -- of a highly creative moment in history.
They also benefited from all the wisdom they could glean from the rich intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment, to which they were direct heirs. Locke, Montesquieu, and the other great thinkers of this tradition gave philosophical footing to the American nation-building enterprise.
Further, the Framers, and the fledgling nation on whose behalf they were acting, enjoyed the luxury that, for all the difference between a typical Virginian and a typical New Yorker, they had a wealth of shared colonial experience and were united by powerful bonds forged in the fire of the revolutionary struggle against Britain. In short, they had a shared idea about what kind of government they did not want, and enough common experience to find a shared vision for a better way.
Even with all these advantages, the ultimate success of the American experiment was a nearer run they we like to admit. In 70 years, the Constitutional compromise over slavery, having eaten away at the nation's connective tissue, finally split the nation, causing the Civil War. Had it not been for Lincoln's perseverance and a chance turn at the battle of Gettysburg, we might well be two countries now.
The Iraqi Constitution: Facing More Daunting Challenge than Our Own Framers Did
By comparison, the challenges facing the Framers of the Iraqi Constitution seem immeasurably more daunting. The Iraqis have structural problems in spades.
To begin with, the Iraqi Constitution will have to find a workable balance between the interests of the country's Shiite Muslim majority and its ethnic and religious minorities, including the Kurds, who seek a degree of autonomy that the Shiites do not want to yield.
No less important, the Iraqi Constitution will also have to find a path to religious pluralism through the minefield of those Islamic factions who would like to make the country a theocracy. Already the key Iraqi players are at loggerheads about what role to give religious law in determining the laws of the nation.
These potentially intractable issues, moreover, come on top of the usual blockbuster Constitution-writing dilemmas -- such as how much power to give the national government vis-?-vis the regional authorities, and how to divide power within the national government.
Iraq's Framers Lack the American Framers' Advantages
Unfortunately, in confronting these seemingly insurmountable problems, the Iraqis enjoy few, if any, of the advantages that blessed their American counterparts in 1789.
At least according to recent news accounts, there are no Madisons or Hamiltons on the horizon. Instead, the two main Iraqi rivals negotiating over the Constitution's content, Faisal Istrabadi and Salem Chalabi. Istrabadi is a medical malpractice lawyer from Indiana. Chalabi is the nephew of Ahmed Chalabi -- the former exile group leader whose suspect advice turns out to have misled the Bush Administration at just about every turn.
Worse still, it appears that Istrabadi and Chalabi both view the Constitutional drafting process not so much as a way of creating a enduring governmental structure, but as a way of ensuring greater power for their respective political patrons. Istrabadi's patron is Adnan Pachachi, who is likely to become the new Iraq's first president; Chalabi's, unsurprisingly, is Ahmed Chalabi, who is likely to become the new Iraq's first prime minister.
No wonder, then, that Salem Chalabi pushes for a weak presidency and strong prime minister's role: His patron (and uncle) is slated for the prime ministership, so of course he'd like that position to be as powerful -- and the presidency's powers as modest -- as possible.
No doubt such parochialism could be overcome if other stars were in alignment. But the Iraqis have no indigenous philosophical tradition - no modern day analogue to the Enlightenment principles that informed America's Framers- to guide their transition to democracy. Although Iraq, of course, has its philosophers, their subject has been religion, not nation-building.
Nor do the Iraqi Framers have the same kind of deep reservoir of shared experience that served the American Framers so well. To the contrary, the Iraqi Framers operate in the context of a near-civil war.
Remember, this is a country artificially created by outsiders only a few generations ago. Now, the various factions vying to shape the Iraqi Constitution are divided by a history of profound ethnic and religious animosity that only Saddam's brutality kept in check.
The Immense Difficulty of Crafting a Meaningful Constitution For Iraq
All this makes the process of writing a meaningful Constitution darn near impossible. Constitutions may reflect shared purposes, but they really can't be expected to create them.
Of course, the Iraqi people richly deserve democracy: Self-government should be every person's birthright. But entitlement and reality can be worlds apart - and bridging that gap will take nothing short of the Baghdad version of our "Miracle at Philadelphia."
What Do You Think? Message Boards
Edward Lazarus, a FindLaw columnist, writes about, practices, and teaches law in Los Angeles. A former federal prosecutor, he is the author of two books - most recently, Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court.
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>> ...
Debate simmers on Saudi reform
By Peyman Pejman
RIYADH - Ever since Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, took power in 1995, many citizens have been anxiously waiting for the political reforms he has promised.
The question of the sincerity of the government in this highly conservative and tightly ruled kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, has been subject to unending debate.
Last month the government arrested half a dozen known reform activists. While a few have been released, others are still in custody, adding fuel to the arguments of those who say the government is not sincere about reforms that range from elections, greater involvement in day-to-day affairs, and voting by women, who do not have the right of suffrage in the oil-rich kingdom.
But many Saudis say they are convinced that the process has started and will not make an about-turn. It might not fly, but it will not grind to a halt, they say.
Khaled Batarfi, a political analyst in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second-largest city, says what is being debated is not whether to proceed with the reform, but its details: to what end, in which direction and at what speed. "Imagine, all of us, the people of Saudi Arabia, are on a plane, flying from one destination to another. There is no question that all of us would like to reach some destination," he said in an interview.
"The question is, to what destination? Nobody says stop in midair because we know we will crash. Nobody is saying, 'Let's go back.' Nobody is saying, 'Let's throw some people out.' We want more influence on the route [we take]," he said. "What kind of route and what kind of speed. Do we go east or do we go west? Do we go as far Washington or do we stop in Europe?"
With approval from the ruling family, Saudi Arabia has held a number of "national dialogue" conferences, during which hundreds of people from all walks of life - women, Islamists, liberals, professionals - have debated what changes they want to recommend to their leaders for implementation.
"The kingdom is committed to reforms. But reforms will be carried out at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way so as to not disturb the peace and stability of the country," Crown Prince Abdullah said during a meeting last month with Saudi intellectuals.
Many Saudis, whether in the government or not, find themselves in a quandary. On one hand, they want to continue to push their government to remain committed to an acceptable pace of reform. On the other hand, they do not want to be perceived as taking those measures because of pressure from the outside world, especially the United States.
But even those who believe in the government's sincerity are warning that they will not wait forever. Khaled Maeena, an outspoken pro-reform advocate and editor of Arab News, one of the country's two English newspapers, says reform should take place for the sake of Saudis, and not with the purpose of appeasing foreign governments.
"I think we should go with our own speed, but at the same time evaluate that speed. If it is slow, we should push it to a certain decent and respectable speed. We need not be prodded by the West. We have to protect our own interests. But let us remember, time waits for no man," he said.
Maeena said one reason some Saudi Arabians in general, whether officials or ordinary citizens, are hesitant to enforce faster reform is that they fear an invasion of foreign influence in this conservative society. That fear, he said, is baseless.
"There are those amongst us who are afraid from change, saying foreign influence will come. Foreign influence will not come because wherever Islam went, it took: Indian culture, the culture in Spain, culture in Persia, the culture in all these places," Maeena said.
"The Muslims came from the desert but yet they built some of the most beautiful gardens in the world, which is that indication that when bab al-ijtihad, or reason and logic prevailed, then they were able to advance. But if we wallow in self-pity [and say] the cultural invasion in the West is out to get us, then I think we are harming ourselves," he said.
There are, however, those in Saudi Arabia who believe the government is not serious about changes in the first place. Mohsen Awaji, a former political-science associate professor who spent time in jail for Islamic and anti-government activities, admitted that the "reform train has left the station". But, he added, the Saudi ruling family will do anything to stop the progress.
Crown Prince Abdullah's government has promised that the country will hold unprecedented elections by October to choose half of the members of all local councils in the country. "Municipal elections will be the beginning of the Saudi citizens' participation in the political system," Crown Prince Abdullah told a recent session of the Shura Council, the country's unelected consultative assembly.
The foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, similarly remarked that Saudi Arabia "has reached a stage in our development that requires expanding political participation".
Pro-reform activists hope this will lead to holding nationwide elections, even with the participation of women, who currently do not have the right to vote.
Awaji said that if the government were serious about holding elections, it would have started preparing people for the process. But this, he said, has not happened so far.
"You see, election means they have to adopt the idea of elections before the propaganda. The idea of the elections means that they have to allow the people to participate in ruling this country," Awaji said.
Saudi officials have said the pace of the reform will be dictated by the country's social and political norms and culture. They say faster-than-needed reform will cause instability in the country and leave the doors open for increased activities by terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, that have carried out a number of bombings in the country in the past year.
(Inter Press Service)
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>> MAHATIR LEGACY WATCH...
Malaysia's MSC: Super corridor or dead end?
By Ioannis Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - Nothing in Malaysia so embodies former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad's vision for the nation than the 50-kilometer stretch of palm and rubber-patched plains between the airport and the capital. Known as the Multimedia Super Corridor and ballyhooing world-class infrastructure, it was intended to attract foreign capital, trigger a technological revolution and lead the nation to fully developed status by 2020.
To Mahathir it was the next logical leap. The economy under his feisty 22-year rule had transformed from agrarian-based to export-manufacturing-driven. Why stop there? The MSC is the superhighway Mahathir has paved for Malaysia.
A visit to the corridor's capital, Cyberjaya, though, suggests the dream hasn't entirely lived up to expectations. Five years after ground was broken, it appears as if the 21st century has come and gone. Or hasn't come at all. Weedy, barren fields await the arrival of construction crews. "Smart" condominiums boasting "broadband access" and "online shopping" are running at low occupancy. The main shopping complex is often eerily quiet, as are the wide, flat roadways beneath which lie kilometers of fiber optics.
Some heavy hitters of the information-technology (IT) world such as Fujitsu, Ericsson, and most recently Motorola, have come, lured by tax breaks, grants and other incentives. A creative college plans soon to relocate to Cyberjaya. And around the end of this month the government is expected to make a vote of confidence when it unveils Phase 2 of the MSC, which will link the corridor to other cities around Malaysia and the globe.
But with the Mahathir era fast fading, Malaysians and the world seem less impressed by the grandiosity of the MSC than they did a few short years ago, when Malaysia looked primed to become one of the few countries to make the elusive leap from developing to developed status. Indeed terms that sprinkle Cyberjaya's marketing brochures and landscape, such as "connected", "wireless", "borderless", and "E-ready" verge on passe. ("Dot.com", the boom from which the dream spawned, has wisely gone missing.)
"Malaysia has fiber optics - so?" quipped one investor.
So do rivals India, Thailand and China, which while not exactly centers of innovation offer similar incentives, and in some cases much lower costs.
MSC officials point out that the corridor is home to 500 companies and since its inception seven years ago has employed 15,000 people, 87 percent home grown, and this surpasses targets. Sliding targets, perhaps - in 2000, officials said they expected the population of just Cyberjaya to surpass 20,000 by mid-2001. Regardless, numbers are rising, say MSC officials.
Mahathir, too, hasn't wavered much from the hard sell. "You are seeing beautiful buildings which are not empty but full of people working in there. That was what we expected," he said before retirement last year.
Others are less optimistic.
"Somewhere it lost a lot of steam along the way," opined Singapore-based economist Song Seng Wun, adding that too much emphasis has been placed on high tech and innovation, a call Malaysians haven't wholeheartedly stepped up to.
Responding to the concern last week, Technology and Innovations Minister Jamaludin Jarjis urged MSC companies not to overlap and duplicate research, calling this "wasteful".
The government has been loath, publicly at least, to acknowledge that the plan might need an overhaul - that would be to admit a US$17 billion blunder in the case of Cyberjaya alone. But it's becoming harder to ignore.
There's a growing sense around Malaysia that Mahathir's megaprojects may have hindered as much as hampered growth, and dealt as much in appearances as substance. By Mahathir's own admission, they were designed in part to woo potential investors. Two other Mahathir megaprojects make up the bookends to the MSC, the vitreous, streamlined airport to the south and the dazzling Petronas office towers in downtown Kuala Lumpur, until last year the world's tallest buildings; a high-speed express train shuttles passengers to and fro.
As a whole, the stretch pumped the spirit of Malaysia boleh, or "Malaysia can". Now when Malaysians utter the phrase it's more often than not with irony. In the case of the airport and twin towers they're starting to look a bit like eyesores, reminders of what once seemed possible; not much has come along to compliment their grandeur. And Malaysia is finding that it takes much more than a high-tech pipe dream to distinguish yourself, raising the unspoken: Is Malaysia plateauing? Must this stable, talented, functional, resource-rich nation rethink itself if it is to live up to its potential?
When Mahathir's deputy Abdullah Badawi took over as premier last October, a sense of optimism swept the country - in large part because he appeared set to diverge from his predecessor. He tabled a grand railway project and vowed to concentrate more on rural development. That and other promises catapulted his coalition to a huge if underhanded parliamentary election win last month. His vision, however, remains a puzzle.
"There's been talk about shifting priorities, but [the government] has not been clear what direction it's going to take," said economist Jomo K S, adding that rethinking a national strategy is overdue, but "it must be informed carefully".
Perhaps a hint lies in Biovalley, a 200-hectare site set to open near Cyberjaya in 2006, with the aim of attracting 150 biotech companies and $10 billion in investment by 2015. It might prove the equipoise Malaysia needs: a simultaneous investment in the MSC and a deviation from its original focus. Biotech - it almost sounds like a natural fit for Malaysia's fertile equatorial soil (see Malaysia's new dream: Biovalley, December 24, 2003).
The verdict on the MSC's fate is still out. And who knows, Phase 2 might capitalize on lessons learned and prove so brilliant as to silence skeptics.
Rob Cayzer, senior manager with the Multimedia Development Corp, the MSC's overseeing body, sees no reason not to be optimistic. "The talent in Malaysia is as good as it is in any other developing country: infrastructure's as good, and so is cost."
He may have a point, but as Malaysia is finding out the hard way, that's no guarantee investors will come.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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>>
Defector describes Iran's massive intelligence operation in Iraq
Iranian intelligence has been operating at least 18 covert centers in Iraq, according to a former Iranian official in Teheran's intelligence community. The defector disclosed the first details on Iran's intelligence presence in Iraq and described efforts to target Shi'ites deemed as aligned with the United States in a nearly $1 billion effort to prevent the spread of democracy in that Arab country...
Memo to 9/11 Commission: Fidel's spy in DIA convinced U.S. Cuba posed no WMD threat ...
Khan account of secret underground N. Korean nuclear facility questioned
N. Korea constructs 'class education' halls around nation in ideological offensive against U.S....
N. Korea scraps food rations, tells people to go shopping...
North Korea selling Scuds to Burma, which may be planning reactor...
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Pakistan: It's deja vu all over again
By Leonard Weiss
Pakistan's denials and duplicity over its nuclear weapons program, combined with a U.S. emphasis on short-term foreign policy goals, got it out of trouble before--and might again.
Berra's famous quote can certainly be applied to recent revelations about nuclear weapon-related transfers to Iran and Libya from a Pakistani-generated, worldwide nuclear-materials black market. The current story also includes a remarkable display of public insouciance by the current U.S. government to the worst case of conscious proliferation in history. [1]
But the larger story is no surprise to those of us who have followed Pakistan's nuclear activities for the past 25 years. There is a long history to Pakistan's nuclear mendacity and the U.S. abandonment of nonproliferation goals in South Asia for short-term advantage in other policy areas.
Pakistani nuclear assistance to Iran and Libya is nothing new. News reports in 1988 revealed that Pakistan was assisting Iran on nuclear enrichment technology; reports of a Pakistan-Libya nuclear connection appeared as early as 1979. [2] In 1987, a BBC documentary film revealed that Libya had provided financing for the Pakistani bomb project in 1973. The Saudis were also involved as bankrollers in those early days. [3]
Despite President Pervez Musharraf's claim that the nuclear transfers to Iran and Libya (and North Korea) are the result of personal greed on the part of "the father of the Pakistani bomb," Abdul Qadeer (A. Q.) Khan, who "confessed" and was immediately pardoned, no serious observer believes that Khan's was a "rogue" operation unknown to the highest levels of the Pakistani military. While the complete story is yet to be told, it is well to remember the words of Musharraf's predecessor, the late Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who said: "It is our right to obtain [nuclear] technology. And when we acquire this technology, the entire Islamic world will possess it with us." [4] (Zia failed to mention that Pakistan would also be sharing its nuclear secrets with North Korea, but that was before North Korea could help Pakistan with missile technology as a quid pro quo.)
Zia's bold statement was itself a paraphrase of a statement by his predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who wrote in his 1979 memoirs: "We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilization have this capability. The Communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change." [5]
Khan's early network
Khan's illicit nuclear trading activities are merely an extension of his activities in the 1970s and 1980s. He began by stealing blueprints for uranium-enrichment centrifuges from Urenco, a European consortium, and then set about buying the materials and components needed for manufacturing highly enriched uranium. Here is some of what Khan was able to purchase in the 1980s: [6]
* 6,200 tubes of maraging steel, used to construct centrifuges, from a firm in the Netherlands;
* vacuum valves and a gas feed system to regulate streams of uranium hexafluoride gas into and out of the centrifuge system from a company in Switzerland;
* inverters from companies in Britain, Germany, and the United States;
* other electronic equipment for centrifuges from firms in the United States by way of Canada and Turkey;
* a metal-finishing plant from Britain;
* special measuring equipment from the Netherlands;
* a tritium extraction plant, special steel and aluminum, optical equipment, and other sensitive goods from Germany;
* vessels and tanks for Pakistan's fledgling reprocessing plant from Italy; and
* precision equipment for a reprocessing plant from Switzerland.
These acquisitions enabled Pakistan to get maximum benefit from the nuclear weapon design and supplies of uranium it received from China in 1983. [7]
In the ongoing investigation of how Libya was able to obtain sophisticated sensitive components for its nuclear program from Malaysia and other countries, the Malaysian police's inspector general reported that "the supply of components by middlemen . . . involved suppliers from other countries to blur the source of the components. Some of the suppliers were believed to be aware that these components could be for uranium enrichment centrifuges. Generally, these suppliers, mostly from Europe, were those who had had dealings with [A. Q. Khan] since the 1980s, at a time when Pakistan was developing its nuclear technology." [8] Der Stern reported on March 21, 1989 that more than 70 German firms helped Pakistan get materials and equipment needed to manufacture the bomb.
Some of the firms from which Khan made his purchases in the 1980s may no longer be involved in the trade, but the ease with which Khan was able to find so many suppliers to satisfy his more recent nuclear demands shows that an international black market was readily created and has been sustained. This is the legacy of the many years during which the United States turned a blind eye to Pakistan's nuclear activities.
Pakistan's brazenness during the 1980s is illustrated by its attempts to purchase and export materials from the United States--5,000 pounds of zirconium metal in 1981, and electronic parts known as krytrons for use in nuclear triggers in 1984. In July 1984 a man named Nazir Ahmed Vaid was arrested for the latter crime, but despite the fact that the government was in possession, on the day of his arrest, of information showing clearly that the intended recipient of the krytrons was the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission, Vaid's indictment was rewritten to exclude any mention of the nuclear use of krytrons. He was then permitted to plea bargain to a reduced offense, thus avoiding a jury trial, and a gag order was placed on the case. He was found guilty of one count of export violation and quietly deported less than three weeks later. As in the current case with A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani government insisted that Vaid acted on his own, with no government authorization. [9] It was one of many denials of the obvious during the period.
No nuclear ambitions here
During the 1970s and 1980s, when all this illicit nuclear activity was going on, Pakistan denied to the West that it was developing nuclear weapons or had any interest in nuclear weapons. As President Zia told the Foreign Policy Association on December 9, 1982:
"I would like to state once again . . . that our ongoing nuclear program has an exclusively peaceful dimension and that Pakistan has neither the means nor, indeed, any desire to manufacture a nuclear device. I trust that this distinguished gathering will take note of my assurance, which is given in all sincerity and with a full sense of responsibility."
A. Q. Khan himself weighed in two years later in an interview on February 10, 1984, saying that "the 'Islamic bomb' is a figment of the Zionist mind."
Starting in the late 1970s, when the U.S. government became aware of Pakistan's nuclear weapon-related activities, I was engaged in seeking to stop or slow the program through congressional investigations and legislative action. My boss at the time was Ohio Democratic Sen. John Glenn, who gave me free rein to work on the issue and became the Senate's voice of protest against Pakistan's nuclear activities. Frustration was more often than not the end result of much of our work.
I either crafted or was otherwise involved in numerous legislative actions designed to stop the Pakistanis through the threat of sanctions. These actions were passed by Congress and dutifully signed into law by three presidents, but their implementation was nearly always blocked because of other foreign policy considerations.
It didn't start off that way. Pakistan had been cut off from economic and military assistance in 1979 under the Symington and Glenn amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act, after it imported unsafeguarded nuclear enrichment technology and equipment. (The Pakistanis said the cutoff stemmed from the influence of "Zionist circles" seeking to protect Israel from the Muslim world.) [10] The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year changed U.S. priorities.
Cold War considerations
When Ronald Reagan arrived in the White House in 1981, his administration came with a desire to send arms to the Afghani mujahideen. They could only be delivered through Pakistan, and nonproliferation took a back seat to Cold War politics. The new administration was so intent on sending arms that as then-Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel later admitted, "There was no explicit agreement . . . no explicit quid pro quo" that in return for U.S. assistance Pakistan would not develop nuclear weapons. [11]
The Pakistanis got the message when there was no adverse U.S. reaction to a tough position articulated by Agha Shahi, then-foreign minister of Pakistan, in a meeting with James Buckley, then-U.S. undersecretary of state. On December 14, 1981, Shahi described the meeting to the Council of Pakistani Editors:
"We told Mr. Buckley that our program is only for peaceful purposes . . . and we are fully aware of the concerns of the United States over our atomic energy program, which we think to be baseless, unwarranted, unjustified. But we understand and we have taken note of this concern. So if we decide to carry out an explosion, then we would be prepared to forgo this [U.S. aid] program. That is a matter for our judgment, but we have given no undertaking to Mr. Buckley about explosions."
Despite Shahi's "in-your-face" position, James Buckley subsequently told Congress: "We believe that a program of support which provides Pakistan with a continuing relationship with a significant security partner and enhances its sense of security may help remove the principal underlying incentive for the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. With such a relationship in place we are hopeful that over time we will be able to persuade Pakistan that the pursuit of a weapons capability is neither necessary to its security nor in its broader interest as an important member of the world community." [12]
Sanctions lifted
One month after Buckley's testimony, Congress passed the first of a series of legislated waivers of penalties under the Symington Amendment that lasted until the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1990. Although the legislation stipulated that a cutoff could still occur if Pakistan were to explode a nuclear device, the Pakistanis did not act worried that U.S. opposition to nuclear proliferation would put their bomb program in jeopardy.
During the U.S. presidential election season in 1984, President Zia told the Wall Street Journal on July 10 that he was "confident that U.S. politics won't disrupt the flow of American weaponry to Pakistan." His confidence was not misplaced. Indeed, it must have been reinforced by the contemporaneous Vaid case, whose lesson to the Pakistanis could only be that the United States would bend over backwards to keep the arms flowing, even in the case of overt nuclear smuggling attempts by Pakistan from within the United States. It must also have satisfied him to read that Richard Kennedy, then-ambassador at large for nonproliferation, had said: "We accept President Zia ul-Haq's statement that Pakistan's nuclear program is devoted entirely to power generation." [13] Ironically, the State Department had written a secret memorandum the year before stating that the United States had "unambiguous evidence that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons development program. . . . We believe the ultimate application of the enriched uranium produced at Kahuta, which is unsafeguarded, is clearly nuclear weapons." [14]
The Solarz and Pressler amendments
As a result of the outrageous outcome of the Vaid case, Congress passed a law, known as the Solarz Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, prohibiting military and economic assistance to any non-weapon state that illegally exports or attempts to export U.S. items that would contribute significantly to the ability of that country to make a nuclear explosive device.
The Solarz and Pressler amendments were signed into law on August 8, 1985. The Pressler Amendment made continued military assistance to Pakistan contingent on an annual presidential certification that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device and that U.S. assistance would significantly reduce the risk that Pakistan would possess a nuclear explosive device. The Pressler Amendment was the last barrier to Pakistan's construction of a device, but the Pakistanis treated it with the same contempt they showed other efforts to condition U.S. assistance on nuclear restraint.
On September 12, 1984, a year before the Pressler Amendment was passed, President Reagan sent a letter to Zia warning the Pakistanis not to "cross the red line" of enriching uranium beyond 5 percent or face "grave consequences." [15] In response, President Zia pledged not to do so, and high-level officials kept repeating that pledge, which was itself repeated by administration spokesmen in congressional hearings. [16]
It was revealed some months later that the Pakistanis had already passed the 5 percent level at the time of Reagan's letter. Crossing the "red line" resulted in no action by the administration, and when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto visited President George H. W. Bush in June 1989, the subject was not even mentioned. [17]
This undoubtedly reinforced the Pakistanis' feeling that they were under no limits by the administration save possibly for testing, and that Congress was equally feckless, with few exceptions. Attempts at smuggling materials from the United States continued, and another smuggler was caught in 1987. A Canadian citizen of Pakistani extraction named Arshad Pervez was arrested for illegally trying to buy and export a quantity of beryllium, along with 25 tons of maraging steel for centrifuges from an American manufacturer. He was ultimately convicted of the beryllium charge and of lying to investigators, but escaped conviction on the remaining charges on the grounds of entrapment, even though American intelligence officials found evidence that the Pakistani embassy in London was directly involved. [18] Pervez, who went to prison, admitted that he was working for a retired Pakistani brigadier general and that the final customer was the Pakistani nuclear program, thereby establishing a violation of the Solarz Amendment. But the U.S. government once again refused to sanction Pakistan, and the Pakistani nuclear program rolled on.
Pakistan gets the bomb
In an interview with Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar, A. Q. Khan admitted that Pakistan had enriched uranium to weapons grade, and added that Pakistan could build nuclear weapons. [19] In March 1987, Senator Glenn testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, arguing that "Pakistani nuclear weapons production will, sooner or later, whether by design or by espionage, result in the wider transfer of nuclear weapons technology to countries in the Middle East." Despite such warnings, and clear evidence that U.S. assistance was not reducing the risk that Pakistan would possess a nuclear explosive device, presidential certifications were issued in 1988 by Reagan and in 1989 by Bush. On November 26, 1987, a UPI story by Richard Sale quoted unnamed intelligence sources as saying that Pakistan had a workable nuclear device, although it was deemed too big "by those who have seen the new bomb" to be delivered by an F-16.
Too little and too late
By 1990, the fiction that Pakistan might not possess the bomb was completely unsustainable. The Soviets had left Afghanistan, so no certification was issued by President Bush and assistance was cut off. Having been the recipient of extreme indulgence for so long, the Pakistanis were surprised by the action, which halted a shipment of F-16s that they had already paid for. Nonetheless, 40 F-16s had already been delivered, at least some of which were being modified to carry nuclear warheads in contravention of the conditions under which the planes were originally transferred. Thus, in service to the Cold War, the United States suffered more than a decade of Pakistani lies and false promises about their nuclear activities, did not enforce its own laws or restrictions on Pakistan's nuclear program when it counted, and left Pakistan with a U.S.-made nuclear weapons delivery system.
Senator Glenn's response to this outrageous history was encapsulated in an op-ed: "The Reagan and Bush administrations have practiced a nuclear nonproliferation policy bordering on lawlessness. In so doing, they have undermined the respect of other countries for U.S. law and have done great damage to the nuclear nonproliferation effort. Keep this in mind the next time someone in the administration extols the need for military action to deal with some power hungry dictator who is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons in the Middle East or elsewhere." [20]
After 9/11
Unfortunately, the story did not end with the cutoff of 1990. Pakistan had the bomb, but it still had not tested a nuclear weapon. So, in a triumph of hope over experience, legislation was passed in 1994 requiring the imposition of draconian sanctions in the event of a test, in the hope of deterring both Pakistan and India.
When both countries exploded nuclear test devices in 1998, the severe economic sanctions in the law were automatically triggered. But once again, Congress removed them, in part because of domestic considerations involving agricultural exports. The prohibition on military assistance continued, however, until after 9/11, when the current Bush administration issued a waiver ending the implementation of nearly all other sanctions because of the perceived need for Pakistani assistance in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. This was the height of irony--it was U.S. support for Pakistan and the mujahideen in the 1980s that helped bring the Taliban and Al Qaeda to prominence in Afghanistan in the first place.
We are essentially back where we were with Pakistan in the 1980s. It is apparent that it has engaged in dangerous nuclear mischief with North Korea, Iran, and Libya (and perhaps others), but thus far without consequences to its relationship with the United States because of other, overriding foreign policy considerations--not the Cold War this time, but the war on terrorism.
But now there is a major political difference. It was one thing for Pakistan, a country with which the United States has had good relations generally, to follow India and produce the bomb for itself. It is quite another for Pakistan to help two-thirds of the "axis of evil," and the perpetrators of Pan Am 103, all of whom have, at one time or another, been accused of being sponsors of terrorism, to get the bomb as well.
The president's dilemma
The waivers given to Pakistan after 9/11 are only good with respect to past behavior. Anything the Pakistanis have done since the waivers were issued that is proscribed by law require new waivers to be issued. If the reports about the timing of Pakistan's exports are true--that some of the transfers occurred after the date of the most recent waivers--and the Pakistani government authorized the exports directly or indirectly, then Pakistan is in violation of U.S. laws and unprotected by past waivers. The same would be true if the Pakistani government was, as is likely, behind the recent incident of an Israeli businessman, operating out of South Africa, attempting illegally to buy and export nuclear trigger components for the Pakistani weapons program. [21]
No cutoff of the generous assistance that is being given and has been promised will occur unless and until the president makes a determination as to Pakistan's guilt. As in the 1980s with the Pressler Amendment, turning a blind eye means not having to make a difficult decision. And so far, the Bush administration appears to be pretending that Musharraf's claim of being the victim of a rogue operation headed by A. Q. Khan is the truth. It is reported that, in return, Musharraf has made some concessions facilitating the hunt for Osama bin Laden in northwest Pakistan. [22] But if the only concessions Pakistan makes because of the Khan case have to do with some immediate tactical advantage in the war on terror, and the nuclear program remains untouched, it is questionable whether U.S. national security has been enhanced in the longer term.
The president wants to be seen as not only a president fighting terrorism, but also as a staunch proponent of nonproliferation. Having gone to war with Iraq ostensibly to stop Iraq's possible proliferation, the president is now faced with a more serious violation of nonproliferation norms.
If the president does issue a new waiver for Pakistan, presumably on the grounds of the need for its support in the war on terror, he risks being accused of conducting business as usual. And, as indicated earlier, some will see this as a wholesale retreat from the nonproliferation rhetoric that fueled public support for the war in Iraq, and it will once again raise issues of U.S. credibility. A frequently voiced opinion abroad is that the United States does not oppose proliferation by its friends.
If, on the other hand, the president doesn't issue a waiver and pretends that no violation by the government of Pakistan has occurred, he risks being accused of misfeasance for having failed to carry out U.S. laws.
If the president wants to preserve U.S. credibility on nonproliferation, he can tell the Pakistanis that he is prepared to declare them in violation and impose sanctions unless they agree to a set of conditions that would cap their nuclear program and ensure the end of their illegal and immoral trade in nuclear weapons technology.
Among these conditions should be a demand that Pakistan sign a verifiable agreement to end its production of fissile material and make its nuclear trading records transparent to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) so the world can know what they are doing and with whom they have been dealing. An interrogation of A. Q. Khan by the IAEA should also be part of the deal. These conditions, if met, could enable the United States, in concert with its allies, to roll up much of the current black market in nuclear materials and equipment.
The president should also announce that greater intelligence resources will be devoted to Pakistan's export activities, with interdiction ready to be carried out under the administration's new Proliferation Security Initiative whenever indicated. In return for Pakistan's cooperation, the United States should be willing to help the Pakistanis improve their own security in ways that do not exacerbate the tensions in the area and are not perceived as assisting their nuclear weapons program.
It's Santayana all over again
Some will argue that national pride would prevent Pakistan from accepting such terms and that the United States would lose a valuable ally in the fight against Al Qaeda if sanctions were imposed. Moreover, they will argue, sanctions could plunge Pakistan into economic and political chaos, with the possibility of takeover by a radical Islamic contingent that would then inherit Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
These arguments (just replace "Al Qaeda" with "communism") have been used for two decades in defense of a weak nonproliferation policy in South Asia that has brought nothing but grief. They do not take into account American credibility and the effect on other real or potential proliferators. It is true that Pakistan may be more prone to destabilization in response to economic stress than some other countries in the region, but it should be Pakistan's choice as to whether it wishes to belong to the community of responsible nations and receive the benefits it needs from that community. In any case, there needs to be an effective contingency plan for preventing Pakistan's weapons from falling into the hands of radical undemocratic elements in the country, something that could happen regardless of U.S. policy.
Pakistan presents a real and ongoing test of the seriousness of the Bush administration on the issue of nonproliferation. The choice between fighting proliferation or fighting terrorism is ultimately a false one. Sacrificing one for the other would have disastrous consequences for national security. George Santayana once wrote that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. In the case of Pakistan, we haven't forgotten, but the Bush administration insists on repeating it anyway.
Leonard Weiss, now a consultant, was a staff director on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, a position he held from 1977-1999.
1. Seymour Hersh, "The Deal," New Yorker, March 8, 2004.
2. O. Gozani, "Pakistan 'Aiding Iran' in Nuclear Weapons Venture," Daily Telegraph, Nov. 26, 1988. See also Farzad Bazoft, "Iran Signs Secret Atom Deal," London Observer, June 12, 1988, p. 1; John Fialka, "West Concerned by Signs of Libyan-Pakistan A-Effort," Washington Star, Nov. 25, 1979.
3. E. Lenhart, "Saudis Offer to Help Zia Build H-Bomb," Sunday Times (London), Jan. 18, 1981.
4. Interview in Akhbar al-Khalij, March 13, 1986, p. F4. Translated by Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FBIS-SAS-86-053, March 19, 1986.
5. See F. Hassan, "An Analysis of Propaganda Against Pakistan's Peaceful Nuclear Program," Nawa-I-Waqt (Lahore), March 16, 1984. See also Robert Windrem, "Pakistan: 'The Crazy Soup,'" MSNBC, February 8, 2004; Steve Weissman and Herbert Krosny, "Pakistan," in The Islamic Bomb (New York: New York Times Books, 1981), pp. 161-226.
6. Congressional Record, October 20, 1981, p. 24505; Mark Hibbs, "German Firms Exported Tritium Purification Plant to Pakistan," Nuclear Fuel, February 6, 1989, p. 6.
7. K. Malik, Times of India, Jan. 13, 1989, p. 1.
8. Press Release, "Inspector General of Police (Polis Diraja), Malaysia, in Relation to Investigation on the Alleged Production of Components for Libya's Uranium Enrichment Program," February 20, 2004, p. 3.
9. Seymour Hersh, "Pakistani in U.S. Sought to Ship A-Bomb Trigger," New York Times, Feb. 25, 1985, p. 1.
10. R. Trumbull, "Pakistan Denies It Plans A-Bomb; Denounces Washington Aid Cutoff," New York Times, April 9, 1979, p. 1.
11. Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphel, testimony before the South Asia Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, September 14, 1995.
12. James Buckley, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, November 12, 1981.
13. Interview with Richard Kennedy, in Pakistan Affairs (newsletter), November 2, 1984.
14. U.S. State Department, Assessment of Pakistan's Nuclear Program, June 23, 1983. Declassified and released in March 1992 to the National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.
15. Simon Henderson, Financial Times, Dec. 7, 1984; Hedrick Smith, "A Bomb Ticks in Pakistan," New York Times Sunday Magazine, March 6, 1988, p. 38.
16. Simon Henderson, "Netherlands Drops Proceedings Against Nuclear Scientist," Financial Times, July 16, 1986, p. 3; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert Peck, congressional testimony, July 31, 1987.
17. David Ottaway, "U.S. Relieves Pakistan of Pledge Against Enriching Uranium," Washington Post, June 15, 1989, p. A38.
18. Mark Hosenball and J. Adams, "A-Bomb Plot is Linked to Embassy," Sunday Times (London), July 26, 1987.
19. Shyam Bhatia, "Pakistan has the A-Bomb," London Observer, March 1, 1987, p. 1.
20. John Glenn, "On Proliferation Law, a Disgraceful Failure," International Herald Tribune, June 26, 1992.
21. David Rohde, "Pakistani Linked to Illegal Exports Has Ties to Military," New York Times, Feb. 20, 2004, p. 8.
22. Seymour Hersh, "The Deal."
? 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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