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The problem with Pakistan's new envoy to Washington? Allegations from A.Q. Khan that the envoy, General Jehangir Karamat, knew about and sanctioned Khan's nuclear smuggling in exchange for missile technology from North Korea, reports David Armstrong in The New Republic:
Now it turns out that Pakistan's new envoy to Washington may have sanctioned his proliferation. In late September, Islamabad announced the appointment of former Pakistani military chief General Jehangir Karamat as its ambassador-designate to the United States. Karamat, who is a close friend of Musharraf, served as head of Pakistan's armed forces from 1996 to 1998. Last February, following exposure of his black-market network, Khan told Pakistani investigators that he traded in nuclear technology with the full knowledge of top military officials, including Karamat, Karamat's predecessor as army chief, and Musharraf, who succeeded Karamat in that post.
Khan made the allegations in an eleven-page signed statement in which he confessed to selling atomic secrets beginning in 1988. A senior Pakistani military official told reporters in early February that Khan had named Karamat and retired General Mirza Aslam Beg, who headed Pakistan's army from 1988 to 1991, as authorizing the sales. According to the official, Khan's statement accused Karamat and Beg of "indirectly instructing" him to make the transfers. The official said Khan told investigators he had acted on instructions Karamat and Beg passed through two middlemen--one a military advisor to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the other a friend of Bhutto's. Moreover, a friend of Khan's told reporters in February that the scientist had recently informed him that Karamat, Musharraf, and Beg were "aware of everything" he had done. (In response to questions from The New Republic, Karamat flatly denied Khan's assertions.)
Yet in debriefings by investigators, Khan reportedly asserted that Karamat was immersed in the details of an arrangement in which Pakistan received help with its ballistic missile program in exchange for providing North Korea with uranium enrichment technology . . .