A country in constant deep denial is often a country in deep trouble. Whenever we are accused of stepping over the line, a series of knee-jerk reactions come into play, with official spokesmen and unquestioning journalists denying the charge of the day and seeking to deflect it by talking of 'mysterious conspiracies'.

Much later, when even the most obdurate ostriches among us cannot continue hiding from the unpleasant truth, a tacit confirmation is made without admitting that we had lied to the world and to ourselves at the outset. One reason our spin doctors get away with this instinctive lying is that we suffer from a collective form of paranoia and have convinced ourselves that the rest of the world is out to get us.

In this worldview, it seems perfectly normal for all kinds of devious plots to be woven against us, and for foreign journalists to be part of this huge international conspiracy against Pakistan.

Thus, when Colonel Muammar Qadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam, declared in a recent interview with the Sunday Times that Libya had bought nuclear secrets from Pakistani scientists, the usual damage-control team swung into action like a well-honed machine.

An official denial was issued, and several editorials and articles appeared condemning this latest attempt to smear the fair name of Pakistan. (In a convoluted denial datelined Islamabad, the young Qadhafi is quoted as saying he meant the contacts were between 'Libyan and Pakistani traders'. What kind of 'traders' are engaged in nuclear secrets and how they came to acquire them is anybody's guess).

Just a couple of weeks ago, Iranian authorities had confirmed to IAEA, the international nuclear arms control body, that they had bought crucial centrifuge designs and components from Pakistani scientists. And for years, reports have been circulating in the international media that Pakistan has supplied North Korea with nuclear blueprints and key parts in compensation for the help it has received for its missile programme.

Taken together, this is a pretty damning set of charges against a country that has long proclaimed that it was a responsible state, and that it would not allow its nuclear secrets to fall into foreign hands. But despite the seriousness of these accusations, there have been curiously few questions asked of our rulers. We seem satisfied to accept whatever spin our officials and our media have chosen to put on the Pakistan connection with all these clandestine nuclear programmes.

However, this time, the mud promises to stick. Whether we like it or not, the world has changed since 9/11. Both terrorism and nuclear proliferation (as well as chemical and biological weapons) are now very high on the American agenda of evils to stamp out.

Currently, Pakistan's usefulness as an ally against Al Qaeda and the Taliban is shielding it from the wrath of the Bush administration, but this equation is a fleeting one: as the Afghan government is more able to cope with the Taliban and its territory becomes less hospitable to religious extremists, Pakistan will be seen both as the centre of terrorist activity and the biggest nuclear proliferator around.

There is (currently) no suggestion that all these illicit contacts had the blessings of the government, or that President Musharraf had any knowledge of them. However, if the ISI is the super-agency it's cracked out to be, surely it must have kept track of the movements of our top nuclear scientists. And if, as is now officially conceded, some of these contacts were on a freelance basis, then large payments must have been made and received.

A few months before the invasion of Iraq Saddam Hussein submitted a 10,000-page dossier to the UN containing a plethora of documents pertaining to his weapons programmes. One of these was a memo from an Iraqi undercover operative in which he reported that he had been approached by a Pakistani who claimed he represented a top nuclear scientist (currently being 'debriefed' in Islamabad) and offering to sell Iraq nuclear blueprints. Although this report surfaced briefly in the western media, not much was made of it at the time in the rush of events. However, it should have been the starting point of a major internal investigation by the Pakistan government.

But then, as now, the government and its relevant agencies went into deep denial, refusing to face the obvious. It is clear that the Khan Research Laboratories at Kahuta have been haemorrhaging secrets over the years, but deliberately or not, our intelligence agencies have turned a Nelson's eye to these dangerous activities. The result is that we are caught with our hand in the cookie jar yet again.

One reason for the reluctance to come to terms with the truth is that Dr A.Q. Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani bomb, has acquired the status of a demi-god among our defence establishment as well as our jingoistic media. Any suggestion that he could possibly act against the national interest was tantamount to heresy. Although rumours of his substantial properties in Islamabad did the rounds, people felt these were small recompense for his huge contribution to national defence.

Another possible reason for the ease with which our nuclear scientists allegedly did deals with Iran and Libya is that being Muslim countries, the guardians of our security probably felt that the Islamic link justified this transfer of technology. But as we have just seen, both countries had no compunction in making the Pakistan connection public.

The truth is that in the wake of the ferocious assault on Iraq, a country demonstrably devoid of the WMDs, nations with nuclear programmes to hide have started feeling very vulnerable and at risk. Thus, Iran has accepted intrusive IAEA inspections, and Libya has agreed to dismantle its weapons programme. And it seems that North Korea will soon fall into line.

So where does this leave us? Way out on a limb. Given the current mood that no longer brooks nuclear proliferation as well as the rapidly improving prospects for peace in the Subcontinent, it is high time that we reviewed the entire nuclear programme.

Apart from its dubious military value - except as a kind of Sampson option where we initiate a nuclear exchange as a last resort - the very presence of such doomsday weapons attracts attention and possible attack. In the aftermath of 9/11, when Musharraf addressed the nation to inform us of his decision to execute a U-turn on Afghanistan, one major reason he gave was the danger to our 'nuclear assets'.

When Saddam Hussein launched his suicidal invasion of Kuwait nearly fifteen years ago, he had no clue about how the rest of the world would react. It seems that while entering into shady nuclear deals with others, we are in danger of falling into the same trap.