Posted on: Tuesday, January 6, 2004
EDITORIAL
Musharraf's defeat would be disaster
That Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have held their first face-to-face summit is astounding enough.
If a peace accord is reached by the two nuclear rivals, that would be monumental. It's going to take time for relations between these long-sworn enemies to normalize after their bitter divorce.
The two South Asian nations that once were one have fought three wars and engaged in countless skirmishes since Pakistan's creation in 1947.
Their games of nuclear chicken have cast a deadly shadow over the entire region for years.
And so the summit is definitely good news. But there'll be bad news if Musharraf is assassinated or loses his already tenuous grip on power.
The military dictator has been a reasonably steady ally in the war on terrorism while trying to keep the lid on Islamic radicalism.
But recent weeks have seen two failed assassination attempts on his life. If a hit succeeds, Pakistan could make other rogue nations appear meek.
Islamic radicals in Pakistan have been able to thrive in religious schools known as madrasas, which encourage jihadism and teach hatred toward the West.
Meanwhile, we know that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. It flaunted them in the 1990s during a saber-rattling contest with India.
Well, now we're hearing that scientists at Pakistan's A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories are accused of leaking nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya.
The government has denied any involvement in the leaks, saying the scientists acted on their own to fulfill personal ambitions.
Whatever the scope of these leaks, it's terrifying to think of Pakistan as a lawless place where Islamic radicals and international terrorists could easily get their hands on nuclear weapons.
That's why the world, including the United States, must keep close tabs on Pakistan and do what it can to protect Musharraf. Not only could his destruction put relations with India back on ice, but it could also turn Pakistan into America's most formidable enemy.
