I've just made it through the NYT's latest on the AQ Khan nukes network. It was a long, hard slog. The payout:
1) The White House is still giving the finger to IAEA. It's trying to unseat chief El Baradei (the NYT suggest it's because of the Iraq war tiff), and more importantly is refusing to share any intel on Khan's network, despite evidence the network is still alive and still shilling nuke items: (WH officials say the agency is too leaky):
The result is that two separate, disjointed searches are on for other nuclear rogue states - one by Washington, the other by the I.A.E.A. And there is scant communication between the feuding bureaucracies.
That lack of communication with the United Nations agency extends to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a loose organization of countries that produce nuclear equipment. It can stop the export of restricted atomic technology to a suspect customer, but it does not report its actions to the I.A.E.A. Moreover, there is no communication between the I.A.E.A. and the Bush administration's Proliferation Security Initiative, which seeks to intercept illicit nuclear trade at sea or in the air.
2) Thank god, the U.S.'s investigation is A+. Except of course, we wouldn't want to trouble the Pakistanis, who still won't let American investigators talk to Khan:
"It is an unbelievable story, how this administration has given Pakistan a pass on the single worst case of proliferation in the past half century," said Jack Pritchard, who worked for President Clinton and served as the State Department's special envoy to North Korea until he quit last year, partly in protest over Mr. Bush's Korea policy. "We've given them a pass because of Musharraf's agreement to fight terrorism, and now there is some suggestion that the hunt for Osama is waning. And what have we learned from Khan? Nothing."
