Apparently, the President George W. Bush agreed not to pressure the Pakistani government about Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist who spread information about building nuclear weapons to North Korea, Libya, Iran, and who-knows-who-else, in exchange for Pakistan's help in finding Osama bin Laden. What does this suggest to us about the administration's priorities when it comes to the war on terrorism?

Nicholas D. Kristof writes for The New York Times:

"We're losing the war on proliferation," Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a military expert and executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says bluntly. ... "I wouldn't be at all surprised if nuclear weapons are used over the next 15 or 20 years," said Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, "first and foremost by a terrorist group that gets its hands on a Russian nuclear weapon or a Pakistani nuclear weapon." ... "It may be that A. Q. Khan & Associates already have passed bomb-grade nuclear fuel to the Qaeda, and we are in for the worst," warns Paul Leventhal, founding president of the Nuclear Control Institute.

It's mystifying that the administration hasn't leaned on Pakistan to make Dr. Khan available for interrogation to ensure that his network is entirely closed. Several experts on Pakistan told me they believe that the administration has been so restrained because its top priority isn't combating nuclear proliferation — it's getting President Pervez Musharraf's help in arresting Osama bin Laden before the November election. Another puzzle is why an administration that spends hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq doesn't try harder to secure uranium and plutonium in Russia and elsewhere.

Now, I wouldn't deny that capturing Osama bin Laden would be good - however, taking the proper measures can help ensure that as long as he is loose, he isn't as much of a threat as before. Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, however, is probably more critical in the near term. We really do need to find out more about what Khan did. We really do need to make sure that Russian stores of nuclear fuel are secured. Choosing a capture of bin Laden at the expense of learning more about nuclear proliferation just isn't acceptable - but if Bush thinks that it is a fair trade, then I suspect that there is more than just stopping terrorism on his mind.

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• War on Terrorism