NEW YORK, Dec 15: When American spy satellites detected a Pakistani plane picking up North Korean missiles in July, there was no public criticism, even though the CIA had said that North Korea’s missile sales paid for its nuclear programme. “‘It’s another piece of evidence,’ one American diplomat said, ‘that Pakistan may be our biggest problem’.”

This was reported by The New York Times on Sunday in an assessment of the Bush administration’s so-called war against “axis of evil”, of which Iraq is presently the focus of attention.

The paper says that last week the two other members of the “axis of evil,” North Korea and Iran, suddenly created nuclear-sized distractions, raising a question the White House wants to glide past: Is the threat from Iraq the most imminent threat to America and the world?

In quick succession, the United States failed to block a shipment of North Korean missiles to Yemen, North Korea said it was resuming production of weapons-grade plutonium, and satellite photographs showed huge progress in Iran’s bomb programme.

“What the president may have just discovered,” Gary Milhollin, the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, told the paper “is that Iraq is actually the least complicated of the three cases. And his team is going to earn its pay in the next few months figuring out the other two.”

For Pakistan what is ominous in the analysis by the Times columnist is that every time North Korean crisis raises its ugly head, somehow one or more US officials for the reasons beast known to them, implicate Pakistan in the imbroglio.

Observing the adverse tilt in the US-Pakistan relationship in the past few weeks, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram said that “the repeated public acknowledgment by President George W. Bush and the US administration of Pakistan’s role as a vital ally in the war on terrorism belie unwarranted concerns about Pakistan’s “reliability” and “responsibility”.

Mr Akram pointed out that “portraying and treating Pakistan as a hostile country will serve the aims of the adversaries of Pakistan and the United States, especially the terrorists; it does not serve the interests of either country.”

“Pakistan’s security and external policies will remain responsible and peaceful. Its nuclear capability, acquired only to deter aggression by a stronger, historically hostile (and) nuclear India, remains under tight command and control. There is no danger of leakage or loss of control. Pakistan would never help the spread of nuclear weapons, since this would be contrary to its national interest and consistent policy,” Mr Akram said.

Many experts and officials here observe that one of the reasons for leaking out unverified accounts and concerns by some of the Bush administration’s officials could be the result of powerful Indian lobby operating on the Capitol Hill and other corridors of power in Washington.

One reason for India to gain influence is the fact that the Indian expatriates contribute large sums of money in the US elections. This year alone in the mid-term elections the Indians reportedly contributed more than $6 million against little less than a $100,000 offered by the Pakistanis.