Pakistan says no new info on AQ Khan's probe: spokesman

[Nasir]

Pakistan says no new info on AQ Khan's probe: spokesman

Pakistan said on Saturday that case against nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan has been closed and all important information had been gathered and shared with the International Atomic Energy Commission and the United States.

A leading US nuclear expert insisted in his testimony before Congress on Thursday that the case against Dr AQ Khan was far from closed and many questions remain unanswered.

"We have completed our investigations and have shared with the IAEA and United States.

"We do not have any new information to share with the United States," Acting Foreign Office spokesman Suhail Mehmood told private NNI news agency.
Reports suggest that the American nuclear expert has asked President Bush to put pressure on President Musharraf to reopen Dr Khan's case.
"Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan case has been closed on our part," Suhail Mehmood said.

"If the United States has any new information they should share with us.
"We are ready are to cooperate," the spokesman said.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) told the Congress that the information supplied by the Pakistan government to the IAEA and other governments appears so far to be incomplete.

He said the Pakistan government needed to provide more assistance to investigators, including the IAEA and affected governments direct access to question Khan and his associates verbally.

http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-16/0605279589175249.htm

 

[Nasir]

Case against AQ Khan ‘far from closed’: US expert
* Says Pakistan provided incomplete info about Khan network
* IAEA should have direct access to Khan and his associates
* Fears Khan network could be seed for proliferation

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: In testimony before Congress on Thursday, a leading nuclear expert insisted that contrary to what a Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson had said, the case against Dr AQ Khan was “far from closed” and many questions, especially about Iran, remain unanswered.

The hearing, held by the subcommittee on international terrorism and non-proliferation, received testimony from, among others, by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). The hearing, which mainly featured the AQ Khan network, was hurriedly arranged, not having been on the concerned congressional subcommittee’s announced schedule, and should be seen as the beginning of a pressure-building process vis-a-vis Pakistan.

The recent Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson’s statement that the case against Dr Khan was now closed and all important information had been gathered and shared, was received with surprise in Washington and viewed negatively, with some in the administration and Congress interpreting it as a counter-pressure tactic against the United States.

Albright argued that specific questions involving Iran include the extent of centrifuge assistance, the logistics of that assistance and the possible supply of nuclear weapon design supplied to Iran by the Khan network. “These areas remain especially troubling as we try to determine exactly how close Iran could be to building nuclear weapons and what sensitive information may remain in circulation around the world that could fall into the hands of other enemies of the United States,” Albright told the subcommittee.

He also charged that the information supplied by the Pakistan government to the IAEA and other governments “appears so far to be incomplete.” He said the Pakistan government needed to provide “more assistance” to investigators, including the IAEA and affected governments “direct access to question Khan and his associates verbally.” This would enable the IAEA and affected governments carried out more thorough investigations and to pursue more effectively criminal prosecutions of individuals involved in the network and to recover physical remnants of the illicit procurement network that have not yet been found and that could provide the seeds for future, secret nuclear weapons programmes.

Albright also found the nuclear export control system created by Pakistan as not having so far been implemented. One necessary step, he suggested, would be to “prosecute Pakistani members of the network to send a clear signal that Pakistan will punish illegal exporters severely and thereby reduce the likelihood that someone will step into Khan’s shoes”. He added that no prosecutions appear to have been so far planned by Pakistan, which increases suspicions that the Pakistan government is “hiding information about the network’s activities”.

Albright said that it was not yet certain if the network could rise again or its remnants become the “seed for a new network”. The nuclear expert also faulted the United States for lack of cooperation with a Swiss company which was part of the Khan network.

Congressman Ed Royce, the subcommittee chairman, said the Khan network has helped deliver to America two of the most threatening security challenges it faces: North Korea and Iran.

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\05\27\story_27-5-2006_pg1_1

 

[TexasJohn]

I don't think this issue will go away soon. I do think there probably was ISI / Military involvement. Nobody can simply fly C-130s out of the country as if you were hailing a cab.

 

[Neo]

The issue is far from behind, even if AQ Khan dies, which is quite possible since the guy is seriously ill, there will always be elements in the US administration willing to 'learn more' about the network.

I'm not sure if the military could have been involved without Mushy knowing it. ISI like any other intelligence agencies has the power undertaking clandestine operations with access to military equippement to certain level.

 

[Neo]

Friday, June 23, 2006javascript:; http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/print.asp?page=2006\06\23\story_23-6-2006_pg3_5

Munir later recruited Qadeer who, as is well known, brought to Pakistan the drawings of centrifuge designs he had purloined from the Dutch company he had been working for. But to develop these designs to enable the successful enriching of uranium was a complicated and complex process and depended on the expertise Munir had put together in Pakistan

Whenever I introduced Munir Khan to a friend I would say light-heartedly “and this is the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb” just to enjoy the pleasure of watching the reaction. Khan himself would give a self-depreciatory smile. As Hans Blix, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear policeman, put it to me, Khan was “a cheerful soul”.

The world has been told over and over again that the father of the Pakistani bomb was AQ Khan, the metallurgist, who in fact ran only one part of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission whose chairman was Munir Khan. More correctly we have recently been told that Qadeer Khan secretly set up an international network to supply the likes of North Korea, Libya and Iran with blueprints and materials for the manufacture of their own nuclear weapons. This was done for his private profit.

Khan and Khan. Too many got the two men muddled. And this worked in Qadeer’s favour. He was a man who had no compunction about claiming every bit of credit for himself and who loved to woo gullible journalists and parliamentarians who adored his tales of achievement. No wonder when he was finally exposed as a nuclear racketeer President Pervez Musharraf couldn’t have him arrested. He had become a popular icon in Pakistan, untouchable.

A long and well-researched article that has just appeared in the Pakistani Defence Journal, written by MA Chaudhri, has usefully drawn back the curtain on the precise roles of these two men. Both foreigners and Pakistanis, he writes, “have failed to understand the underlying efforts under Munir Khan and his team of world class nuclear scientists and engineers. They developed and led the entire nuclear weapons programme including uranium mining for the bomb itself, and all related nuclear facilities, training institutions and technologies and the development of the complete nuclear fuel cycle and the still-largely-unknown plutonium programme.”

Munir was a friend of Zulfikar Bhutto and the two of them tried unsuccessfully to persuade President Ayub Khan to build a bomb. But when Bhutto became president in 1971 he made his famous remark “we shall eat grass if necessary but build the atomic bomb” and Munir was given the green light.

Munir had been on the staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1958, head of the reactor engineering division. He developed vast international contacts and was rich in managerial and scientific experience. It was he who pushed for the refinement of domestic uranium and persuaded the French to train his scientists in enrichment know-how. Munir later recruited Qadeer who, as is well known, brought to Pakistan the drawings of centrifuge designs he had purloined from the Dutch company he had been working for. But to develop these designs to enable the successful enriching of uranium was a complicated and complex process and depended on the expertise Munir had put together in Pakistan.

All along the pathologically ambitious Qadeer was working to undermine Munir. According to Chaudhri he paid journalists to accuse Munir of being unpatriotic and belonging to the ex-communicated Qadiani sect. (Earlier the Nobel prize winning physicist, Abdus Salaam, had been driven out of Pakistan by a similar campaign.)

After the coup by General Zia and the hanging of Bhutto, Munir’s grip was loosened. Zia, seeing Munir as a friend of Bhutto, allowed Qadeer to build up his image. Qadeer was willing, as Munir was not, to trumpet the idea of an “Islamic bomb”. Munir, self-effacing to a fault, later confessed that he should have fought off Qadeer’s grab for fame. Nevertheless, Munir still held the reigns when in 1983 Pakistan reached an historic milestone — the bomb was ready and secretly a “cold test” was held. (A cold test is the actual detonation of a complete bomb but instead of enriched uranium in the middle of the bomb natural uranium is substituted.) So only nine years after India’s “peaceful nuclear explosion”, but 15 years before it came into the open with a full nuclear test, Pakistan had its bomb.

Munir retired from the chairmanship of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission seven years before Pakistan went public with the bomb. He died in 1999. In his later years he tried to persuade successive presidents that Qadeer was selling Pakistan’s know-how for profit. But by then Qadeer was simply too powerful to move against.

Munir was no saint. He was chairman of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1986 to 87. Supposedly the chairman of the world’s policing authority, back home he was engaged in subverting it. Presumably earlier, when he had been an important staff member, he was building up the contacts and knowledge he later milked to build the bomb at home.

The world was duped many times over by the intrigues of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists and the politicians who sponsored them.

The writer is a leading columnist on international affairs, human rights and peace issues. He syndicates his columns with some 50 papers around the world

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\06\23\story_23-6-2006_pg3_5