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Pakistan fights back after nuclear
confessions
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - After prolonged detention, Pakistani
authorities have finally succeeded in getting a
confession statement from the father of Pakistan's
nuclear program that the scientist was involved in
nuclear proliferation in a personal capacity.
Far from being disgraced, though, Pakistan will
leverage the revelations - long suspected - against the
assistance it can afford the United States in
Afghanistan.
According to a Pakistan government
official, the 66-year-old founder of Pakistan's nuclear
program, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, has acknowledged that he
transferred nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North
Korea. According to the official, Khan made the
confession in a written statement submitted "a couple of
days ago" to investigators probing allegations of
nuclear proliferation by Pakistan. The transfers were
made during the late 1980s and in the early and
mid-1990s, and were motivated by "personal greed and
ambition", the official said. No decision has yet been
taken on what action to take against Khan.
According to sources close to the investigators,
Khan in his written confession also named armed
personnel and scientists who had confessed to being part
of the nuclear transfer game along with him. Apparently,
the proliferation was well-planned and involved
nationals of other countries, with Dubai in the United
Arab Emirates (UAE) used to leak technology to its final
recipients - Iran, Libya and Korea - via chartered
planes. It was also found that Khan traveled more than
40 times to different countries over the past two years,
including Dubai, Turkey, Casablanca, South Africa and
Malaysia, to meet people of the underworld.
Khan
and other Pakistani scientists have been under suspicion
for some time, but events speeded up following the
recent disclosures by Iran that Pakistani and scientists
of other countries had helped Tehran develop its nuclear
program. Khan had headed Khan Research Laboratories
(KRL), Pakistan's main nuclear weapons laboratory, until
being forced out two years ago under severe pressure
from the US, which feared connections of al-Qaeda
elements with some Pakistani scientists.
In a
related development, a former son-in-law of Khan, Noman
Shah, and a close friend, Azad Jaferry, have been taken
into custody for interrogation. Sources in Islamabad
told Asia Times Online that both acted as frontman for
Khan. Shah has a contracting firm registered in the UAE,
while Jaferry is believed to be the frontman for Khan's
investment in lucrative businesses, including a club in
Islamabad, a luxurious guest house, and in an European
hotel chain.
Fallout from Khan's
confession
Islamabad has appreciated for some
time that, given the latest events involving its
scientists, it would come under strong international
pressure to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), and open up its facilities to international
safeguards and inspections. Neither Pakistan nor nuclear
neighbor India have signed the NPT. And worse, there is
a strong belief in the corridors of power in Pakistan
and the KRL that the US will attempt to force Islamabad
to abandon its nuclear program altogether.
Consequently, Pakistani authorities have devised
a strategy under which they will urge the US to back off
their nuclear facilities, in exchange for help in
extracting the US from the imbroglio in which it finds
itself in neighboring Afghanistan.
Developments
in Afghanistan strengthen the Pakistan hand. From March
this year, as the winter thaw begins, more than ever
since September 11, after which Pakistan pledged
allegiance to the US in the "war on terror", the US
needs Pakistan's help for the safety of the 12,000
international troops in Afghanistan.
Intelligence reports confirm that once the ice
has melted, the Afghan resistance, comprising al-Qaeda,
the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan of Gulbuddin Hekmatyr and
the Islamic Movement of Taliban, will invite local
tribes on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border
to help expel foreign troops and retake major cities
lost by the Taliban in late 2001.
The tribal
aspect of this plan has alarmed Western security
officials as US-led forces rely on sections of their
support to conduct operations in Afghanistan.
Strategists in Islamabad told Asia Times Online that
Pakistan would now offer to mediate by soliciting the
Taliban - which Pakistan originally helped bring to
power in 1996 - to join in a national government and end
their resistance.
If this works, the US will get
a much-desired exit strategy from Afghanistan, and
Islamabad will get to keep its nuclear program intact.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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