U.N. should investigate sale of Pakistan's nuclear secrets

If there were such a thing as a human weapon of mass destruction, it would be Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb. Khan admitted this week that he sold nuclear weapons secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya and earned hundreds of millions of dollars in the transactions.
In so doing, he gave the governments of these rogue nations the ability to not only threaten world peace but to eliminate their opponents at home. In North Korea, for instance, more than 1 million people have died at the hands of the brutal dictator, Kim Chong-il, but neither the United States nor other countries have been willing to take him on. Why? Because North Korea is believed to possess nuclear weapons, thanks in large part to Khan.
Likewise, the ayatollahs who run Iran continue to sponsor global terrorism and to crack down on their people, yet the United States has been reluctant to bring about regime change as it did in Iraq. Uncertainty about how close Iran is to having nuclear weapons becomes a factor.
It is instructive that North Korea, Iran and Iraq were described by President Bush as an "axis of evil" bent on harming the United States. But only Iraq has felt the full force of America's military might. The weapons of mass destruction that the administration contended existed in Iraq and were going to be used by Saddam Hussein have not been found.
Saddam was toppled in the March 2003 invasion and is in custody. Meanwhile, North Korea behaves as though the world owes it a debt of gratitude for not using its nuclear weapons.
Black-market profiteer
Khan, described by the Associated Press as a black-market profiteer and the Christian Science Monitor as a nuclear proliferator, has received a public pardon from Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for his sins against humanity. The scientist came clean only after his illegal business was uncovered after the Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, gave Pakistan information that Pakistani technology had been found in Iran and Libya.
Why the pardon? Because Musharraf knew that the Bush administration would not make a big stink about it. And it hasn't. Indeed, administration officials have praised Pakistan for the way in which it has handled the Khan affair.
Never mind that there are credible reports that the selling of weapons secrets was conducted with the blessing of members of Musharraf's government and the intelligence services. As far as Bush is concerned, Pakistan's support of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, which resulted in the ouster of the Taliban and the disruption of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, and its cooperation in the search for bin Laden justify the kid glove treatment it has received from Washington.
But as David Kay, a weapons inspector, put it: "I can think of no one who deserves less to be pardoned."
The United Nations should not permit this case to be swept under the rug by the Bush administration. It should launch an independent investigation to determine how high up in the Musharraf government Khan's connections go and who served as his partners in crime.
In addition, the U.N. should determine which other countries received nuclear weapons secrets from Khan.
The presidential pardon of Khan has the stench of a cover-up.