ISLAMABAD, 11 February 2004 — The Pakistani government was warned by nuclear scientists even before the country’s first public bomb test in 1998 that Abdul Qadeer Khan was involved in suspicious activity, a government official said yesterday.
After President Gen. Pervez Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, scientists repeated their concerns about Khan — the father of the country’s nuclear program — amid suspicions over his personal wealth, including many properties around the capital, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
International allegations about nuclear proliferation from Pakistan’s nuclear program and Khan had dogged the country for years, but were repeatedly denied by the government and Khan was shielded from international questioning.
The official’s comments reveal Pakistan had internal information about Khan’s suspect activities far earlier than previously known.
Pakistan relied on the international black market to supply its covert nuclear program that began in the mid-1970s, and officials say Khan was given autonomy to acquire what was needed to build a nuclear deterrent against rival India.
The official said that concerns about Khan prompted Musharraf to set up a National Command Authority in February 2000 to oversee the nuclear program and prevent the spread of technology.
Another government official, who also did not want to be named, said suspicions that Khan was spreading nuclear technology to other countries prompted a raid by intelligence agents on a C-130 transport plane at a military base at Rawalpindi near Islamabad during 2000, but no incriminating evidence was found.
Musharraf told The New York Times in an interview published yesterday that he suspected for at least three years that Khan was transferring atomic technology to other nations. But he said he could not act earlier because he didn’t have enough evidence to make the politically sensitive arrest of Khan. “It was extremely sensitive,” Musharraf said. “One could not outright start investigating as if he is any common criminal.”
The general claimed no proliferation occurred after Khan’s removal from Khan Research Laboratories.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters Monday that he had told Musharraf he must pull up the nuclear smuggling ring “by its roots.” “I said to President Musharraf that we want to learn as much as we could about what Mr. Khan and the network was up to, and it has to be pulled up by its roots and examined to make sure that we have left nothing behind.”
