The wages of greed is embarrassment. There is little doubt that the avarice of some petty functionary in North Korea led to the Ku-Wol San fiasco. A minor element of the Pyongyang apparat scheming to make a few dollars on the sly by facilitating a sugar shipment. Too bad he chose a ship carrying weapons to Pakistan, and that he chose to have it stop off in an Indian port. The cargo of the Ku-Wol San, now on ice in Kandla, has given the lie to Pakistan's loud claims of having developed its missiles indigenously.What the rummaging party has recovered from the ship amounts to a transfer of technology - complete production blueprints, milling equipment, hullmetal, even launchpads. True, these are intended for the manufacture of small surface-to-surface missiles. But this need not be the first time that the North Koreans have used the sea route to move weapons technology into Pakistan.In fact, the haul from the ship is compelling circumstantial evidence for a charge that has been repeatedly levelled atPakistan: that it makes new missiles with the same technology used to create new roads and whole cities in India. It simply renames them. It has long been suspected that the missiles that Pakistan tested with such fanfare last year were merely renamed versions of the curiously-named Nodong class of missiles. Country of origin: North Korea.While the case vindicates India's claim that Pakistan is importing military hardware illegally, it is also of interest to the international community. Any nation interested in seeing the Missile Technology Control Regime through should take issue with North Korea.It has long been alleged that the cash-strapped nation sells military hardware and technology to make ends meet. Now, there is definite evidence that its arms are moving freely on the high seas. Every shipment that goes through, whether to Pakistan or Iraq or any other client, undermines international efforts to flatten the growth curve of missile technology.North Korea is putting back the clock ondisarmament as surely as though it had nuked Seoul. The scientists who had voted for the hands of the Doomsday Clock to be moved forward after Pokharan II should now advance it by a couple of minutes more. What North Korea is doing may be less palpable than a nuclear test, but no less serious. North Korea's protestations on the issue are no more convincing than Islamabad's insistence on the existence of freedom-fighters in Kashmir.What the find at Kandla really points to is the ease with which the fifth horseman is being armed, in spite of all controls on weapons. After the proliferation of small arms in Africa, there has been tremendous pressure on arms suppliers to collect end-use certificates for even a small consignment of handguns. Bill Clinton's move to clamp down on small arms in the US is part of a global trend that demands greater accountability from arms manufacturers and dealers.But it will be an exercise doomed to failure if whole missile systems, complete with plant, machinery andblueprints, are travelling the seas with no let or hindrance. There is sufficient provocation for India to internationalise this issue, and to expect it to be taken seriously by the international community.
