ISLAMABAD, 12 March 2005 — The opposition in Pakistan’s Parliament yesterday denounced Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad’s statement a day earlier identifying nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan as the man who supplied centrifuges to Iran. The minister’s statement was highly irresponsible, opposition members said in the National Assembly and walked out.
The lawmakers said the minister’s remarks could create problems for the nation. They called for a debate on the matter, but National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Ameer Hussain rejected the request.
Dozens of angry lawmakers continued shouting over the speaker’s objection, then walked out.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the leader of the Islamic political alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, said Sheikh Rashid’s remarks were “highly irresponsible.” “This is a very serious and sensitive matter and the house should hold a debate on it,” he said.
“Once again Pakistani leadership is playing in the hand of the United States to serve its sinister motives against Iran,” said opposition lawmaker Liaquat Baloch, an MMA legislator. “This is part of a conspiracy to defame national heroes and our scientists.”
Baloch demanded the government stop making “reckless” statements and tell lawmakers when the centrifuges were handed over and who was in control of the military and the government in Pakistan at that time.
Sheikh Rashid said Thursday that Qadeer, who fell from grace after he publicly confessed early last year that he passed nuclear secrets to other countries, had passed the centrifuges along to Iran through the black market.
He insisted the government was in no way involved.
Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, a lawmaker from Pakistan People’s Party, a moderate opposition group, also criticized the minister and praised Qadeer for helping Pakistan attain an atomic bomb. Qadeer is still considered a hero by many Pakistanis for single-handedly building a nuclear weapon to counter rival India.
Qadeer has been living under virtual house arrest since December 2003. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been investigating for more than two years evidence he sold nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, North Korea and others.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who made Pakistan a key ally of Washington in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America, pardoned Qadeer last year, but restricted his movement.
