NEW YORK, Dec 2: As the US concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons become more pronounced in the aftermath of the reports of a trade-off with North Korea on missile technology, The New York Times in an editorial on Monday asked the Bush administration “to make explain to its leader, Gen Pervez Musharraf, that continued behaviour of this sort will not be tolerated.”

Though Pakistan has denied supplying such technology, with a 400 per cent assurance by Gen Musharraf to US Secretary of State Colin Powell that the report are baseless, yet the media here is seemingly embarked on a systematic drive.

Last month in an Op-ed piece an NYT columnist, Nicholas Kristoff, in applauding Israel’s preemptive strike against Iraq’s nuclear weapons site at Osirak in 1981, seemed to make a similar case against the Pakistan’s programme.

Nevertheless the paper asserts that “Pakistan provided Pyongyang with the perfect solution by sharing design plans of the uranium enrichment technology it had stolen from the West and used in its own secret nuclear programme. In exchange, Pakistan got North Korean missile components, which Pyongyang also ships to Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Egypt.

“Neither the country has shown the least hesitation about placing unconventional weapons in the hands of dangerous dictators. Pakistan claims to have ended its exchanges with North Korea, but the United States spotted a Pakistani plane picking up North Korean missile parts as recently as last summer” the paper said.

The paper observed that “few countries have improved their standing in American eyes as dramatically as Pakistan has in the past two years. Long shunned by Washington for its links to terrorism, its nuclear weapons programme and autocratic military rule, Pakistan became a valued ally, mainly by abandoning its support of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan after the Sept 11 attacks on the United States.”

However, the paper maintained that “Pakistan’s reputation is threatened once again. The American intelligence agencies have recently confirmed that Islamabad provided indispensable help to North Korea’s secret nuclear weapons programme that threatens 100,000 American troops in Asia, along with the people of Japan and South Korea.”