Silicon Valley: The United States needs to urgently clamp down on Pakistani nuclear transfers to North Korea or any other would-be nuclear powers, an American expert on South Asian Affairs said on May 31.

Evidence suggests that nuclear collaboration between Pyongyang and Islamabad did not end when Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf staged the army coup in October 1999, and may still be continuing, Selig S Harrison, director of the Asian Programme at the Washington-based centre for International Policy, wrote in the 'San Jose Mercury News'.

"Firm US action is urgently needed to guard against further Pakistani nuclear transfers not only to North Korea but also to other would-be nuclear powers, notably Saudi Arabia, and to prevent the leakage of Pakistani fissile material to terrorist groups," he wrote.

Harrison wrote that the "smoking gun" that triggered the US confrontation with North Korea over the uranium issue in October 2002 was the discovery of an incriminating document two months earlier showing that Pakistan was still helping North Korea at that late date, three years after Musharraf took over power.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Pakistan used US-supplied C-130 transport planes to ship 6 Nodong missiles from North Korea to the A Q Khan Research Laboratories in March.

This resulted in US trade sanctions against the Khan Laboratories and the North Korean Changgwong Corporation.

"The continuing transfer of North Korean missiles to Pakistan raises the question of how Islamabad is paying for them. It was Pakistan's inability to pay in cash in 1998 that prompted its offer to pay instead with uranium enrichment technology.

"In this latest transaction, if Islamabad is not paying with nuclear technology, is it using some of the cash given by the United States since 9/11 to buy missiles from Pyongyang?", Harrison writes in the paper.

He wrote that given the tension between the United States and Saudi Arabia, there was a growing danger that Riyadh may seek to obtain Pakistani nuclear technology and weaponry in the increasingly likely event that Iran should become a nuclear power. After all, Saudi Arabia had told high-level US officials on several occasions that it would need a nuclear deterrent if Iran developed nuclear weapons.

"Perhaps the most compelling argument for a US nuclear inspection regime in Pakistan is that its nuclear facilities are riddled with al-Qaida sympathisers who might smuggle fissile material out to terrorists.

"Stopping nuclear non-proliferation is a paramount U.S. interest, no less important than combating Al- Qaida," Harrison wrote.

PTI