Arms Control Two Tales of Skulduggery

By Bruce W. Nelan

The military face-off in the Persian Gulf does seem, as George Bush puts it, to be Iraq vs. the world. Twenty-four countries have sent powerful armies, fleets and air squadrons to confront a nation of 17 million people. If anyone needed proof that the days of old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy are gone, that should fill the bill. Iraq, along with many other Third World countries, has acquired such sophisticated, destructive armaments that even a superpower feels more comfortable about standing up to Baghdad with the help of allies.

Now a new stage in regional arms races is approaching. One reason Western governments are determined to deal with the threat from Iraq is that Saddam Hussein is only a few years away from developing nuclear weapons and accurate medium-range missiles to deliver them. The British TV network Channel 4 reported last week that Baghdad may have discovered uranium in northeastern Iraq and may already be operating an enrichment plant there. If the report is true, Saddam is poised to develop a nuclear weapon sooner than most experts have predicted.

According to CIA Director William Webster, "At least 15 developing countries will be producing their own ballistic missiles" by the end of the decade. Iraq is not the only one of them with nuclear ambitions. Two others:

PAKISTAN. Although the Bush Administration is not actually saying so, it has concluded that Pakistan has the atom bomb.* Washington's silence is eloquent. In order to continue supplying military and economic aid, Bush must certify to Congress that Pakistan does not possess nuclear weapons. Last year Bush did so; this year he did not. Military assistance and all new aid -- a potential $564 million for this fiscal year -- has been cut off.

Pakistan's leaders routinely pledge that the country is not building the Bomb. In fact, it began pursuing nuclear arms in earnest after its neighbor and rival, India, exploded a test device in 1974. Pakistan has been producing weapons-grade uranium since 1986. Most analysts have been convinced for several years that the country has had on hand all the components necessary to make bombs. Last year Pakistan tested two new ballistic missiles. Leonard S. Spector, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, estimates that Pakistan's arsenal could contain up to 10 bombs of about the same yield as those the U.S. dropped on Japan in 1945.

The White House has apparently drawn the same conclusion. "Pakistan has gone past the line used by Congress and the Administration to define possession," says a senior U.S. diplomat. "They keep saying one thing and doing another and getting caught." Spector believes that the threshold Pakistan crossed was turning enriched uranium into metal cores needed for bombs, which it did last summer.

Still, the Administration is not reconciled to cutting Pakistan off permanently. Islamabad is the main link to U.S.-supplied mujahedin guerrillas in Afghanistan and the contributor of 2,000 troops to the gulf buildup. Two weeks ago, State Department officials sounded out Congress on extending aid without certification until elections are held in Pakistan next week. Legislators refused to go along with a waiver.

In Islamabad the caretaker government of Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi was startled by the aid cutoff. Some Pakistani officials do not believe Washington is serious, because it needs Islamabad's help in the gulf. Others chalk it up to irritation on Capitol Hill at the dismissal of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on corruption charges. If elections are open and fair, they believe, the "political problems in Washington" will ease.

Tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is intense, and with war between them a real possibility, neither is likely to halt its nuclear weapons program. Spector estimates the Indian nuclear arsenal at 40 to 60 bombs. Pakistan sees its weapons as a deterrent to India's nuclear and conventional military superiority.

Some American officials are suggesting that they are prepared to rewrite the rules for Pakistan. Cutting off assistance, says a senior U.S. diplomat, "could be provocative and produce more in the nuclear field than continuing aid would." Now that Pakistan has the Bomb, he argues, the U.S. should strive for "confidence that the program is frozen" and not expanded to build more and bigger weapons.

But antiproliferation has become a more popular cause since Iraq invaded Kuwait, and it is not certain that Congress will move the goalposts in the Administration's direction. Congressional staff members say they expect the White House to look for a compromise once the newly elected government has been formed. "The Pakistanis," says a Capitol Hill staffer, "probably assume we'll find a way to resume aid, but I'm not at all sure it's going to happen." Regardless of the outcome of the debate on the Hill, of course, Pakistan will remain a nuclear power.

BRAZIL. Like Pakistan, Brazil solemnly denied for years that it had an atom bomb program. The country's new civilian President, Fernando Collor de Mello, has admitted publicly that such a military effort was under way, and has ordered it closed down. He shoveled a symbolic two scoops of lime into a 1,050-ft. test-site shaft last month and ordered the site closed.

Under military rule from 1964 to 1985, Brazil launched its nuclear program in the 1970s. There is no clear explanation why the country set out to build the Bomb, a project that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but nationalism and the desire to become a regional superpower had a lot to do with it.

In 1987 the government announced that it was able to produce uranium enriched enough to fuel power reactors. The program was, of course, "exclusively peaceful." Brazil signed cooperation agreements on nuclear technology with Iraq in 1981 and China in 1984. Until their return two weeks ago, 21 Brazilian rocketry engineers had spent 18 months in Iraq working to improve Baghdad's missiles.

For all the recent public statements, experts both inside and outside Brazil remain less than convinced that the country is finally out of the Bomb business. The Collor government still refuses to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- "an unjust instrument" because it does not apply to acknowledged nuclear powers, the Foreign Ministry says. There are also doubts about whether the government controls the military.

"The armed forces," says Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, a nuclear specialist at the Brazilian Physics Society, "are continuing their nuclear programs." If funds for them are not halted, Rosa predicts, Brazil's military could produce a Hiroshima-size bomb in a year or two. Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington think tank, agrees. "The State Department has not been willing to recognize that Brazil is a proliferation risk," he says.

Last week Senator Bob Kasten of Wisconsin focused on an application by Embraer, a Brazilian aerospace firm that has sold weapons to Iraq, to obtain supercomputer technology from IBM. The Senate passed Kasten's amendment barring supercomputer exports to Brazil and any other country aiding Iraq. The White House opposes the amendment as too broad and considers it a restriction of the President's powers in foreign relations.

How the U.S. government and others decide such questions as the export of advanced technology helps to determine whether countries like Brazil will become nuclear missile powers. Usually the decisions are made on short-term foreign policy grounds -- the need to give Collor a pat on the back, the desire to be involved with Brazil's development. But the technology is long term, and the entire world must live with the consequences.

FOOTNOTE: *The five declared nuclear powers are the U.S., the U.S.S.R., China, Britain and France. Four states are believed to have secret nuclear arsenals: Israel, India, Pakistan and South Africa.

With reporting by Edward W.Desmond/Islamabad, John Maier/Rio de Janeiro and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington