Nuclear Khan:

The more that is known about the peddling of parts and designs for nuclear wea-pons by the network of the Pakistani metallurgist A Q Khan, the more pressing is the need to have him divulge what he knows about his network’s transactions. Recent disclosures indicate that Khan and his accomplices dealt in centrifuges for enriching uranium and the designs to build the core of a nuclear bomb.

It is known that Khan’s customers included North Korea, Iran, and Libya. He may also have done business with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. But Saddam Hussein rejected an offer, suspecting it was part of a sting operation. In 1995, UN inspectors discovered a document dated June 10, 1990, that described a Khan offer of a “project to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”

This revelation of Khan’s should have been alarming enough to cause the IAEA and concerned governments to swoop down on Khan. But after the revelations, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has placed him under a comfortable house arrest. It should be evident that Musharraf must not be allowed to go on shielding the father of the Pakistani bomb from foreign interrogators. The world needs to know exactly what Khan sold to which countries. Khan has to reveal everything he knows about manufacturers of parts and the whereabouts of bomb designs and the people who peddle them. —The Boston Globe