Buy it up

An extraordinary row has broken out between Pakistan and Britain over Soviet-vintage nuclear material allegedly on sale in Pakistan's blac...

An extraordinary row has broken out between Pakistan and Britain over Soviet-vintage nuclear material allegedly on sale in Pakistan8217;s black-market. Extraordinary because the two governments should not be wasting time saying unpleasant things to each other; they should be cooperating quietly to put the lethal material out of harm8217;s way.

There are many reasons to be sceptical about a story which says the Soviets left canisters of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium behind in Afghanistan. But whatever the provenance of the material, if there is any truth to reports that canisters of it are available for sale with one Waheed Malik Khan in Pakistan, many people, including the Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden, will be interested to know about it. The quickest, surest way to prevent him or anyone else from getting their hands on the stuff is to buy it up. Instead of which British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain has been calling Pakistan a 8220;threat to world peace8221; and Islamabad has reacted accusing Hain of making 8220;irresponsible statements8221;.

A public quarrel like this is the best way of increasing the demand for and pushing up the price of the canisters. It confirms the lethalness of their contents and spreads word of their availability far and wide. Waheed Malik Khan has much to thank Hain for, the world does not. Nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands has been every country8217;s nightmare. On the breakup of the Soviet Union, the major fear was of leaks from decaying, poorly funded nuclear facilities. A key element of nuclear cooperation deals reached with the Russian Federation, Khazakstan and Ukraine was international financial assistance for the safe storage and disposal of weapons-grade nuclear material. Under a Russian-American deal, for instance, the Americans buy plutonium dismantled from Russian weapons and convert it into reactor fuel.

A commercial approach is not fail-safe but is the best available means of checking diversion of nuclear material. If some material has found its way to Afghanistan and from there to Pakistan, there should be a concerted effort to locate and acquire it. Evidently paying the suppliers is going to be less costly and more effective than sending the police out to hunt for it.

The risk of course is stoking the black-market in nuclear material. But by encouraging sellers to sell the black-market channels up to the source of the material can be discovered and then sealed.

What Peter Hain says of Pakistan8217;s responsibility for stopping private parties from selling nuclear material on the market is more precisely applicable to nuclear powers like Britain, Russia, France and, above all, the US. It is their primary responsibility to mop up the post-Cold War nuclear mess.

It is no good their putting the whole onus on a failing state like Pakistan. Washington bears a heavy responsibility which it scarcely recognises for the condition in which Afgha-nistan and Pakistan are in today, awash with arms and drug-dealers which weak governments do little to control. On top of all that if there is firm evidence of a black-market nuclear we-apons material, international intervention will become inevitable. But first, let Waheed Malik Khan and his goods be found.