Silicon Valley: Nuclear proliferation from Pakistan raises serious doubts about its role as a partner in war against terrorism and the US must once again examine its alliance with this ally, a media report said today (Feb 09, 2004).

"Since the end of the cold war, America's major security concern had been hostile rogue State. But the recent revelations of Pakistan's export of nuclear technology around the globe suggest that we face a different threat by rogue allies," a daily said in its opinion piece.

"Pakistani nuclear scientists and their military friends have endangered the security of this country far more than any rogue enemy out there. Aside from handing the keys to atomic bomb-making to countries such as North Korea and Libya, they may have provided the instruments of nuclear terror to al-Qaeda itself," Danial Sneider, the foreign affairs columnist for San Jose 'Mercury News' said.

Commenting on Pervez Musharraf's pardoning of top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in exchange for a confession that exonerated anyone in the Pakistan Government of complicity, the columnist said the "whitewash was not surprising".

"But that doesn't make it less alarming. It means that there can be no real confidence that the Pakistani Government is really rooting out this proliferation danger or even that it has stopped its trade in nuclear secrets.

"Musharraf's refusal to fully cooperate with international agencies to shut down these operations or to permit monitoring of Pakistan's nuclear programme should only deepen our suspicions that a cover up is in the works," the columnist said.

The Bush administration's response was equally disturbing as it not only heaped praise on Musharraf, but expressed confidence that "serious efforts" were being made to stop the nuclear trade, the paper said.

Khan, it alleged, provided not only the technology to enrich uranium for bombs but actual designs for nuclear warheads.

"What if this technology and information was also being provided to terrorists? And with Pakistan, this is not idle speculation. There is widespread sympathy for radical Islamic views within the nuclear establishment and the military," the paper said, adding two recently retired senior scientists met several times with Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders to discuss weapons of mass destruction.

Both men Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chauduri Abdul Majeed were detained and questioned in the fall and winter of 2001 but never arrested or charged.

Two other scientists also wanted for questioning about their links to bin Laden were shipped off to Myanmar and out of sight.

"Where are all these men now? Can we really trust earlier denials? Did the Pakistani Government cover this up too?" the paper asked.