Recent events in Pakistan are deeply disturbing and serve to underline the correctness of those - from President Bush, to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union - who identified rogue states, ruthless terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, and, worst case scenario, all three acting in unison, as the greatest international security challenge. What has emerged is not just a scandal for Pakistan but one of global dimensions that requires attention at international level.
What is known publicly is this. Dr Adbul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, has been selling nuclear equipment and know-how to three of President Bush's so-called axis of evil states - Libya, Iran and North Korea. The height of his acknowledged activities is a period of 10 years or more spanning the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Dr Khan is believed to have gone to North Korea 13 times over the past decade. A Muslim and a nationalist, Dr Khan has connections throughout the Arab world, as well as in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, which formed part of what has been described as a nuclear supermarket.
What is not known, or is not acknowledged, is who worked with him and who were his accomplices. There can be little doubt but that they include several senior figures, serving or retired, from Pakistan's ruling military.
In a series of carefully orchestrated charades last week, Dr Khan first admitted his wrongdoing and then apologised on Pakistani television. The following day, a grateful dictatorship pardoned him, sought to assure the rest of the world that the scientist had acted alone and declared the matter closed. Only the most fervent of Dr Khan's supporters will swallow that.
President Pervez Musharraf's robust dismissal of any inspecting role for the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency was accompanied by his declaration that Pakistan would shortly test a new missile with a 2,000 kilometre range - nearly three times the striking power of its current missile capability. Thus does he seek to ratchet up an arms race between his own country and India, two of the world's poorer nations, where resources would better be spent on healthcare and education.
The United States, in contrast to the Bush administration's belligerent approach elsewhere, has been largely silent. Given the assertion by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr George Tenet, that the CIA had contributed to the discovery of Dr Khan's activities, it is reasonable to surmise that Washington has gone along with this affair because it thinks it now has sufficient leverage to maintain a permanent watch over Pakistan's nuclear programme. The rest of us can only hope that this is the case.
The US is right to expect broad international support for a legitimately waged war against terrorism but it should now pressurise its friends in Pakistan to co-operate with the IAEA, just like Iran and Libya.