“Mind Boggling”

That information was apparently passed on to the new administration. On June 1, 2001, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage used language that was clearly understood to refer to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the flamboyant founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. He expressed concern that the Pakistani nuclear labs, the Khan Research Laboratory and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Agency, might be spreading nuclear technology to North Korea.

The concerns centered on “people who were employed by the nuclear agency and have retired,” Armitage told the Financial Times of London. He spoke two months after the sudden retirement of Khan, who had been the well-known face of Pakistani nuclear weapons for decades.

“It is suspected that he did something on his own with North Korea as a quid pro quo for missile technology,” said Rifaat Hussain, a prominent Pakistani political scientist who has written extensively on the country’s nuclear program and is now a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

The Khan Research Laboratory has both a missile-development center and an industrial-sized gas-centrifuge plant for enriching uranium for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. “If there was a transfer, Khan’s organization at the lab would probably be the contact,” said Gaurav Kampani, an expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “But he could not have done it without the sanction of the military,” which tightly controls the nuclear weapons program.

Explaining the reasons behind displacement of Dr. Khan from the Chairmanship of KRL, Mr. Musharraf highlighted few points in the speech at a dinner hosted in his honour, (i) Nations cannot afford to sit on their laurels. Success must be reinforced. New ideas and new blood must continue to be injected, (ii) I always believe that the time to make a transition is when you are on top. I also believe that transition must be effected smoothly so that there is no dislocation of objectives, and (iii) Giving any other colour or meaning to my decision is unfair.4

Mr. Musharraf tried to convince the confused domestic audience with utmost caution without celebrations for the new change. At the same time, the Pakistani President staged a gimmick by putting the same old wine in a new bottle. The reality behind the whole episode is yet to emerge on the ground. Is it not surprising that Dr. Khan, who is known for his outspoken character, opted to underplay in a mysterious way and accepted the advisory role, as Special Adviser to the Chief Executive on Strategic and KRL?

Besides being chairman of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) science and technology panel, chairman of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, member, board of governors of Hamdard university, Sir Syed University (Dubai), International Islamic University and honorary member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, Dr. Khan has been overseeing the development of two important technical institutions in Pakistan – (i) A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering at the Karachi University campus with an estimated cost of Rs. 250 million, and (ii) Gulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Khan, a larger than life national hero, announced his “mea culpa” in public on television and a grateful president granted the pardon. Almost everybody both within Pakistan and beyond see this as a huge cover-up to shield the Pakistan Army and to take the issue out of embarrassing public attention.

And to add to this charade, the Bush administration has been quick to give a clean chit to the Pakistani ruler and characterised the entire Khan fiasco as an “internal matter” of Pakistan.

In a hard-hitting editorial for a second day, The Washington Post [Giving Pakistan a Pass] asked Mr Bush to insist that Pakistan supply the details of its trafficking to the IAEA and allow outside monitoring of its nuclear programmes. “It can not be left to Mr Musharraf to decide how or whether it will be done.”

The editorial said while the military ruler’s belligerence was only expected, what’s hard to believe is the Bush administration’s reaction to it. It said instead of imposing sanctions against Pakistan, the administration has “swallowed Mr Musharraf’s coverup and even congratulated him.”

He said Pakistan is a sovereign country and not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and would not permit outside inspections.

There was no question of allowing anyone to inspect or hand over documents regarding investigations on nuclear proliferation, he said. “We have to safeguard our nuclear and strategic assets which are not open to inspection. We will not be open to inspection.”

Akram’s comments came as International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman was quoted as saying by media that the organisation was interested in the details of the black market to complete its investigations into the nuclear programmes of Libya and Iran, which Khan, the father Pakistan’s of nuclear bomb, confessed to have assisted and was later pardoned by Musharraf.

No matter how the foreign aid gets utilized in specified objectives in Pakistan, Dr. Khan has been a great fundraiser for the country from the Gulf States for education and health sectors. It may be recalled that to sustain the US imposed sanctions in 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan had received considerable financial support from the Arab states, mainly Saudi Arabia and Libya. Despite international criticism, to continue with the clandestine efforts for nuclear weapons development, Dr. Khan had adroitly played a vital role in capitalising his international contacts both in terms of technology and finance.

Instead of maintaining restraint in unlawful acts, Dr. A.Q. Khan was quoted boasting his involvement in the nuclear development programme of Pakistan as – “A.Q. Khan says Western governments repeatedly tried to prevent Pakistan from developing a nuclear weapon capability, but they were foiled by the greed of their own companies: “Many suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with figures and numbers of instruments and materials … In the true sense of the word, they begged us to purchase their goods. And for the first time the truth of the saying,….. We purchased whatever we required.…”5