Khan's nuclear ghost continues to
haunt By B Raman
CHENNAI - Dr
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the self-styled father of Pakistan's
atomic bomb, has been back in the headlines after a
statement disseminated by the National Council of
Resistance of Iran, a group opposed to the present
regime in Tehran, last month that between 1994 and 1996,
when Benazir Bhutto was in power, Khan gave Iran a
Chinese-developed nuclear-warhead design.
The
statement enjoyed a certain credibility in
nuclear-non-proliferation circles in the United States
because an earlier allegation of the same organization
about the existence of a clandestine uranium-enrichment
facility at Natanz, Iran, was found to be correct on
inquiry by officials of the Vienna-based International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Inquiries by IAEA
officials brought out that the centrifuges for Iran's
enrichment facility had been supplied by Khan. Not only
that: spot inspections by IAEA officials reportedly
revealed that some of the centrifuges had traces of
highly enriched uranium, required for a nuclear weapon.
This casts doubts on Tehran's contention that the
facility was meant to produce low-grade enriched uranium
for power stations. Iran contended that since it
imported the inspected centrifuges second-hand, it was
possible that the traces of military-grade enriched
uranium found in some of them might have gotten into
them at the place of origin, meaning Kahuta, Pakistan,
where military-grade enriched uranium is produced for
Pakistan's atomic bomb.
Since then, the IAEA has
not been able to establish whether the traces came from
Kahuta as contended by Iran or whether they indicated
that Iran had clandestinely produced some weapons-grade
enriched uranium. The only way of establishing the truth
is for IAEA personnel to inspect the centrifuges in
Kahuta and to compare the traces found in Iran to the
enriched uranium produced in Kahuta.
Pakistani
President General Pervez Musharraf has been vehemently
opposing any suggestion for a spot inspection of Kahuta
by the IAEA or for the interrogation of Khan by IAEA and
other foreign experts in order to establish the truth.
Musharraf has been saying that Khan has already been
thoroughly interrogated by Pakistani officials and that
whatever information he gave had been shared with the
IAEA and others concerned. Hence the question of his
interrogation by outside experts did not arise.
Last month's claim of the National Council of
Resistance of Iran has thus placed Pakistan in a
difficult spot. The Daily Times of Lahore wrote on
November 20: "The Iranian resistance group has
credibility, since it first blew the whistle on the
Natanz facility, which led to revelations about Iran's
secret efforts to enrich uranium and also led to Dr
Qadeer's connections with Iran. The problem would have
been Iran's internal issue if it did not have
consequences for Pakistan. Between Dr Qadeer's ambitions
and the internal political strife within Iran, Islamabad
has been caught like a nut in a cracker ... The problem
for us is the alleged Dr Khan linkage. Islamabad had
thought that it had put the issue behind it. The trouble
also is that Pakistan has not come out with any clear
policy on the Iranian nuclear program."
The
nuclear ghost of Pakistan's past did not stop to haunt
it there. It continued to pop up from different and
often unexpected quarters. On November 23, the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) put on its website
edited extracts from a report on nuclear proliferation
worldwide during the second half of 2003 submitted by it
to the US Congress. It had another bombshell for
Pakistan. The CIA report said: "Before the reporting
period, the Khan network provided Iran with designs for
Pakistan's older centrifuges as well as designs for more
advanced and efficient models and components."
What did the CIA mean by "designs for more
advanced and efficient models and components"? Pakistani
analysts maintained that it meant more advanced
centrifuges. But the New York Times, in an analytical
article as quoted in the Daily Times of November 27,
interpreted it otherwise. It said: "A new report from
the CIA says the arms-trafficking network led by
Pakistani scientist A Q Khan provided Iran's nuclear
program with significant assistance, including the
designs for advanced and efficient weapons components."
The Daily Times wrote: "The [New York Times]
story is aimed at alleging that Pakistan gave a warhead
design to Iran and wants to create exactly this
impression. This is obvious from the reference to a
closed-door speech to a private group by former CIA
director George Tenet and references to unnamed CIA
officials. According to the NY Times, Tenet described
Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program,
as being at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden
because of his role in providing nuclear technology to
other countries."
The Daily Times continued:
"The worst aspect of this story is this. The warhead
design provided to Libya by the Khan network was for an
aging, crude Chinese model. Such a design would
nevertheless provide Iran with important assistance in
what American officials say is its quest to develop
nuclear weapons, a goal, they say, Tehran could reach in
the next several years."
The Nation, another
Pakistani daily, wrote on November 26: "The Zionist
lobbies in Washington have long desired to drag Pakistan
also into the affair. The never-ending campaign against
Dr Khan is part of the plan. Earlier, it was maintained
that he supplied Iran with older designs for
centrifuges. What is worrisome is that American
officials have raised the stakes by accusing him now of
sharing information about bomb components. This is
particularly outrageous as bomb-making has never been Dr
Khan's specialty." (Now, one could discern an attempt in
Pakistan to project Khan not as the father of Pakistan's
atomic bomb, but only as the father of Pakistan's
indigenous uranium-enrichment capability.)
The
Nation warned: "Pakistani investigators have thoroughly
quizzed Dr Khan and a number of other scientists. Any
direct or indirect suggestion to allow him to be
interrogated by outsiders would imply Washington does
not have faith in the Pakistan government ..." The paper
wanted Musharraf to tell US President George W Bush that
"this is not the way to treat a highly active member of
the anti-terror coalition who is also a major non-NATO
ally". (This is like a serial killer contending that his
serial killings should not be investigated because he
has been participating in the campaign against AIDS.)
In the meantime, as General (retired) Jehangir
Karamat, Musharraf's predecessor as the chief of army
staff, took over as the new Pakistani ambassador to the
United States, some American non-proliferation experts
drew attention to his alleged role in the conclusion of
a deal between the North Korean and Benazir Bhutto
governments, which led to the supply of North Korean
missiles to Pakistan and the assistance to North Korea
in the enrichment field. They wondered whether it was
wise on the part of the Bush administration to have
accepted him as the Pakistani ambassador. They were
apparently worried that this could come in the way of a
more thorough investigation into the nuclear-missile
barter between Pakistan and North Korea, which has not
yet received the same attention as the nuclear deals
with Iran and Libya.
Non-proliferation activists
have also started focusing on Saudi Arabia of late. Did
it have nuclear aspirations too? If so, were there any
deals with Pakistan?
As more and more
disclosures emerge and as more and more inconvenient
questions are being asked, most analyses are coming back
to the question: Could Dr Khan and a small group of
scientists close to him have done this as a rogue
operation without the approval and involvement of the
political and military leadership of the country? Should
the outside world be satisfied with Musharraf's
contention that Khan had been thoroughly interrogated
and that all the information given by him shared with
others and that no further interrogation is needed?
Definitely not by outsiders, he says.
Should the
world be satisfied with Musharraf's assurance that it
was a rogue operation by a small group of greedy
scientists and that there is nothing more to be learned?
One thing stands out clearly from the recent
developments - the entire truth has not come out. Only
part of the story, as given out by Musharraf, has come
out. Is it not necessary for the safety of the lives of
billions of innocent civilians, who face the threat of a
possible use of weapons of mass destruction by jihadi
terrorists, to find out the truth?
There is only
one man in Pakistan who has the entire picture, right
from the day the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto launched a
clandestine project for acquiring a military nuclear
capability in the 1970s and brought Khan, then a young
scientist working in the Netherlands, and put him in
charge of it. Since then, scientists have come and
scientists have gone, but Khan has been a constant,
shining star in Pakistan's nuclear firmament. Leaders
have come and leaders have gone, but Khan continued
undisturbed as Pakistan's nuclear czar and became the
blue-eyed boy of all leaders - political or military, to
whatever side of the political spectrum they belonged.
Without having him interrogated by an independent
outside panel, the truth will never be known.
India was sneered upon in the 1970s by the
outside world, particularly by the US, when it
discovered the launching of the atomic-bomb project by Z
A Bhutto, his projection of it as an Islamic bomb to the
Muslim community in order to get funds for the project
and his appointment of Khan as the head of the project
and rang the alarm bell. India's cries of alarm were
attributed to what was projected as its compulsive
anti-Pakistan reflexes.
When India raised an
alarm about the construction of the Kahuta enrichment
plant, it was told that Khan had been a glorified
storekeeper in the Netherlands plant and would not be
able to develop an enrichment capability. He did.
When India raised another alarm about the
Chinese sharing their old nuclear designs with Pakistan,
it was attributed to its anti-China reflexes.
I
have been writing about the Pakistan-North Korea
nuclear-missile axis since 1998 and have written nearly
a dozen articles on it. People were told not to take my
articles seriously because of my intelligence
background. I was projected as an anti-Pakistan analyst,
who misses no opportunity to have Pakistan discredited.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and my
articles have proved correct in retrospect.
Postscript The News, the prestigious
daily of Pakistan, reported as follows on December 16:
"The government has sought return of official [blue]
passports of those KRL [Khan Research Laboratory at
Kahuta, which produces weapons-grade enriched uranium]
employees who were investigated or are still being
probed ... Besides Dr A Q Khan, Dr Ghulam Yasin Chohan,
Saeed Ahmed, Dr Muhammad Atta, Muhammad Fahim, Chaudhary
Muhammad Ashraf, Riaz Ahmed Chohan, F H Hashmi, Raja
Arshad Mehboob, M Shamimur Rehman, Raja Gul Jabbar, Dr
Abdul Majeed and Badarul Islam have been asked to comply
with the latest instructions ... The News has learned
that the passports would be used to track down foreign
movement of these officials. Earlier, an SBP [State Bank
of Pakistan] directive had sought bank account details
of Dr A Q Khan, 16 members of his family and 12 other
nuclear scientists and members of their families. The
SBP had also directed commercial banks to forward
details of accounts of the scientists such as account
number and type, account opening form, latest balance
and statement of accounts. An official said the
government 'simply wants to corroborate the statements
made by the officials in custody or during the
investigation with the situation on ground as it exists
in the documents'."
B Raman is
additional secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat,
government of India, New Delhi, and currently director,
Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and
distinguished fellow and convenor, Observer Research
Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-mailcorde@vsnl.com.
