LONDON, 23 February 2004 — Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto accused the country’s president yesterday of covering up a vast scandal involving the leaking of nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

Speaking in Britain where she lives in exile, Bhutto said President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to pardon the top scientist at the center of the scandal — Abdul Qadeer Khan — only fuelled suspicion the president himself was involved.

“It seemed to me to be a big cover-up,” said Bhutto, an arch-rival of Musharraf. “I know Qadeer Khan, and I find it very hard to believe that he could have exported nuclear technology on his own... One person could not do it because of the enormous security,” she told BBC television. In a dramatic televised confession earlier this month, Khan, who was revered as the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, said he acted independently in leaking secrets as head of Pakistan’s nuclear program from the 1970s.

A day later, Musharraf pardoned the scientist, saying he remained a national hero despite passing secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.Musharraf has said neither the government nor the military was involved in leaking secrets and rebuffed calls for an independent inquiry into any military role in the leaks.

But Western diplomats, local commentators and opposition parties say Khan could not have acted alone and say he is being used as a scapegoat for the army, which Musharraf heads. Bhutto, leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party, said she believed Musharraf himself was behind the scandal and urged him to quit. Asked why Khan had confessed, Bhutto noted that he had only done so after his arrest. “We believe that he is covering up for Musharraf,” she said. “And we think that if Musharraf has endangered our nuclear arsenal and endangered our country’s reputation by involving himself in the export of nuclear technology, he has no business to remain in power.”

Bhutto said Khan may even be killed by Pakistani authorities wishing “to silence him forever because he knows too much about the people who ordered him to export nuclear technology.”