February 02, 2004

Pakistan Scientist Admits Selling Nuclear Secrets

The father of Pakistan's atomic bomb has confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, but authorities have yet to decide if the national hero will go on trial, officials said Monday.

Top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was sacked as adviser to the prime minister Saturday and is the main suspect in a two-month investigation into allegations that individuals passed on Pakistan's nuclear weapons secrets to third countries.

Seven suspects are still under investigation, but senior former military and intelligence officials -- who experts say must have known about Khan's activities -- are not being questioned.
[Pervez better correct this situation right quick!--Jen]

Putting Khan on trial is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, where he is revered as a national hero and the father of not only the country's, but the Islamic world's atomic bomb.
[...]
Intelligence sources said the evidence against Khan was strong enough to formally charge him, and included a statement from a key middleman in Dubai that could prove damning.
[...]
But Western diplomats and analysts say a trial would open a "Pandora's box" for Pakistan and in particular its powerful military, which was likely to be implicated in any case.
[...]
Pakistan launched its investigation more than two months ago after the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, found evidence pointing to Pakistani involvement in Iran's nuclear program.
[...]
The decision to single out Khan marks a major turnaround in Pakistani policy. In January, 2003, the government rushed to his defense, dismissing as "concocted and fabricated speculation" newspaper reports linking him to illegal proliferation.

The widely read Urdu-language press has criticized the handling of the case, and accuses President Pervez Musharraf of blindly following America's agenda after he supported its war in Afghanistan and vowed to crack down on Islamic militancy.
[...]
Khan was a key architect of Pakistan's atomic program from the 1970s up to the first nuclear tests in 1998. The program was developed in response to India's.
[Brilliant response, you insecure, hot-headed 3rd world crazies!--J.T.]

The Pakistani military said at the weekend that no illegal proliferation had occurred since the establishment of the National Command Authority, which controls Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, in February, 2000.

It added that Pakistan would not curtail its nuclear weapons program as a result of the investigation.

Gulp. Hard swallow.
This is very, very bad news but at least now we know for sure.
This makes it a virtual certainty that Iran and North Korea have actual nuclear weapons; you know they wouldn't just get the know-how for its own sake.
And we know about Libya.
Let's pray like there's no tomorrow (because there won't be if we don't) that this Pakistani National Command Authority has everything there under sober and adult control, that no-one sells Perv the planes or the missile technology that could deliver these nukes and that President Bush gets our Missile Defense system up and running without delay.