ISLAMABAD, 30 May 2008 — Pakistan’s most famous nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan said yesterday that there would be further revelations to come about the country’s nuclear proliferation scandal.
In a rare interview with a television station the day after the 10th anniversary of Pakistan’s first nuclear tests, Khan said that most of the facts about the scandal were widely known.
But when asked what was yet to be revealed, Khan told Dawn News television: “They will be out, there are some things — they will be out in time, when an appropriate time is there.”
Khan said that there were certain subjects he could not talk about because of the “national interest.”
The scientist told AFP last month that he took the blame for exporting nuclear secrets in order to “save his country.” President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan but has kept him under house arrest ever since. Musharraf has denied any state involvement in the episode but refuses to let foreign investigators question Khan.
Khan remains a national hero in Pakistan. Starting in the 1970s, he led the uranium enrichment program that made Pakistan the Muslim world’s first nuclear power.
The anniversary of Pakistan’s 1998 atom bomb test — giving it a deterrent against historical archrival India — was marked on Wednesday, amid growing calls for Khan to be freed.
Speaking by phone from his Islamabad residence, Khan told the television station that the test had proved skeptics in the West wrong that “we were not capable of doing anything.”
Yet hopes that Pakistan could then make progress in economic development after becoming “self-sufficient” in national defense had not been realized, he said.
“This has not happened. The last 10 years, the country has gone to the dogs,” Khan said. “People are hungry. You see the (rising) prices and all.”
Asked if he blamed Musharraf for the nation’s problems, Khan said: “The team leader is to be responsible for the failure of the team but all those who were with him did not assert themselves and do a proper job.”
Khan said that the new government should be given time to cope with Pakistan’s many problems.
Khan’s forthright comments touching on the nation’s volatile politics appear to reflect his increasing confidence in speaking out and the diminishing standing of Musharraf.
Khan told Dawn TV that the restrictions on his movements had not been relaxed although he was allowed out of his house to visit the Academy of Sciences this month to mourn a former colleague.
Khan said he was free to use the phone but soldiers still guard his house in a swank district of the Pakistani capital and “only a very few people have been allowed to come and see me.”
Khan said his health had deteriorated because of his detention. He said he had suffered many illnesses including deep vein thrombosis and prostate cancer — for which he underwent surgery last year.
