ISLAMABAD, 5 February 2004 — The confession by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan regarding nuclear leakage has shocked the nation. Qadeer Khan, architect of Pakistan’s atomic bomb and revered as a national hero, was involved in illegally peddling sensitive nuclear technology abroad.
Intelligence sources say evidence against Khan was strong enough to charge him, but putting on trial the man eulogized for matching India’s nuclear program is a sensitive issue in the country of 150 million.
The opposition has called for a national strike to protest Khan’s sacking and feelings on the street were also running high. “Nowhere in the world are national heroes treated like this,” said Saboor Khan, a cab driver in the capital Islamabad.
“Only yesterday we were displaying his pictures all over the country, but now he is being turned into a big criminal.”
The widely-read Urdu-language press saw a conspiracy behind what it labeled the “humiliation” of Khan, and accused the government of following US orders again after it threw its weight behind the US-led “war on terror”.
“The country’s pride and our heroic scientists are being humiliated in the name of American pressure,” the daily Nawa-e-Waqt wrote in an editorial this week. Analysts say putting Khan on trial could give the opposition the opportunity to exploit public opinion against President Pervez Musharraf.
The appearance on television by Khan, at the center of an international storm over Pakistan’s role in nuclear proliferation during the 1980s and 1990s, was greeted with skepticism.
“There is no doubt that it is a cover-up,” said Shahid-ur-Rehman, a Pakistani journalist and nuclear expert. Musharraf has already made many enemies in Pakistan for supporting the US-led “war on terror” and trying to make peace with India, and diplomats say Washington would probably forgive him if he chose not to try Khan.
“I don’t think people like A.Q. Khan should be tried. He is a national hero. He has developed the (nuclear) program,” said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the religious coalition which has threatened to call a national strike over the issue.
A senior military official told Pakistani journalists on Sunday that Khan had made a detailed statement confessing to supplying designs, hardware and materials used to make enriched uranium for atomic bombs to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Pakistanis fear the government is being asked by the West to roll back its nuclear weapons program, which they say would leave them exposed to Indian aggression in the future. The government has said there would be no rollback.
Many Pakistanis feel Khan has been made a scapegoat for the military, which has controlled the country’s nuclear program since its inception in the 1970s.
“If he is guilty, then he should be tried openly and those who were meant to keep tabs on the nuclear programs should also be held accountable,” said Mian Arshad Mehmood, a lawyer in the eastern city of Lahore.
“It is not possible for Khan to export nuclear technology without the knowledge of others.
“They should also be exposed and punished along with him,” agreed Haider Ali Kharal, an industrialist.
