PAKISTAN: Pakistan's President Gen Pervez Musharraf yesterday pardoned the head of his country's nuclear weapons programme, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed to selling nuclear technology to help Libya, Iran and North Korea, writes Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
At the same time, the president, who is a military dictator, was trenchant in his opposition to United Nations inspections of Pakistan's nuclear facilities. There was no place in Pakistan, he said, for the UN's watchdog body, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"This is a sovereign country. No document will be given. No independent investigation will take place here," he told a press conference.
The head of the IAEA, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, insisted yesterday that Dr Khan had not acted alone, implying that others in Pakistan's ruling military elite had to have been involved with him in nuclear proliferation.
Explaining his decision to pardon Dr Khan, Gen Musharraf said: "There's a written appeal from his side and there's a pardon written from my side . . . Whatever I have done, I have tried to shield him."
Dr Khan is a national hero in Pakistan for building the Islamic atomic bomb to deter nuclear rival India, but last weekend, after weeks of rumour and under questioning by the authorities, he admitted selling nuclear secrets to three of President Bush's so-called axis of evil states, Iran, Libya and North Korea. Gen Musharraf said he had to strike a balance between international requirements and saving an icon.
"You cannot shield a hero and damage the nation," Gen Musharraf said.
Details of the pardon, also recommended by the cabinet, however, were not made public, including whether Dr Khan would have to repay the vast sums of money he received for selling the country's nuclear secrets. Gen Musharraf confirmed that money had motivated Dr Khan.
"That's the reality," he added.
But Gen Musharraf repeated his claim that neither he nor the army, which he also heads, which has controlled the Pakistani nuclear programme, had any role in Dr Khan's covert proliferation of atomic secrets that included transfer of hardware. He ruled out an independent investigation into the allegations as demanded by the Opposition.
In Vienna, Dr ElBaradei declared that Dr Khan's activities were merely the "the tip of an iceberg".
"Khan was an important part of the \ process, but was not working alone. There's a chain of activity that we need to follow through," said Dr ElBaradei, adding that there was a "pressing need" to know who was producing centrifuges that are used to make highly enriched uranium for atomic bombs.
Besides nuclear blueprints, Dr Khan is believed to have supplied centrifuges to Iran, Libya and North Korea transporting them out in cargo ships and chartered aircraft. He was also reportedly responsible for "sponsoring" a factory to manufacture centrifuges in Malaysia.
"A lot of bits and pieces had been produced in different countries," Dr ElBaradei said but admitted that Dr Khan's case raises "more questions than it answers".
The IAEA was also investigating who else besides the three countries that Dr Khan named had received atomic material via the global nuclear market which the scientist efficiently worked for over a decade.
Dr ElBaradei said individuals in at least five countries were involved in the trafficking which began in the 1980s and urged that export controls for nuclear material that had now become a vital issue, be tightened.
Pakistani officials and analysts privately dismiss Dr Khan's pardon as a charade and a cover-up.
They maintain that, in all likelihood, it was part of a wider deal to limit the damage and stop Pakistan's military being dragged into the scandal.
"There are many doubts which need explaining," retired Lt Gen Talat Masood said. The Pakistani public has lost confidence in the country's leadership including that of the nuclear establishment, he added. Others, including the opposition, believe that the pardoning of Dr Khan had Washington's support, as Pakistan is a key US ally in its war against terror.
Western security officials speculated that the US may have used the Dr Khan episode to persuade Pakistan to freeze its atomic weapons programme as a precursor to rolling it back before eventually capping it altogether.
Police, meanwhile, are investigating whether a Malaysian company controlled by the prime minister's son supplied components meant for Libya's nuclear weapons programmes as part of the widening international trafficking probe.
The Malaysian police chief, Mohamed Bakri Omar, said that Scomi Precision Engineering, or Scope, a subsidiary of the Scomi Group, produced centrifuge components that were intercepted on their way to Libya last October.
Kamaluddin Abdullah (35), the only son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is the company's largest shareholder but has no management role.
Western security agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6 are believed to have informed Malaysia last November of a deal involving Scope and a Dubai-based businessman who was acting as a middleman "in supplying certain centrifuge components for Libya's uranium enrichment programme", Chief Omar said in a statement.
Wooden boxes with centrifuge parts bearing Scope's name were found in five containers seized in Italy from a ship headed for Libya last October, he declared.