Source: Sydney Morning Herald
by Declan Walsh

FOR four years Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, has lived in the shadows, confined to his home in Islamabad since a tearful televised confession in which he admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

The 76-year-old scientist has now returned to the spotlight, claiming he had not meant a word of his earlier admission.

In his first Western media interview since 2004, Dr Khan said the confession had been forced upon him by the President, Pervez Musharraf. “It was not of my own free will. It was handed into my hand,” he said.

He has also sworn never to co-operate with investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, despite fears that nuclear technology traded by his accomplices could fall into terrorists’ hands.

“Why should I talk to them?” he said. “I am under no obligation. We are not a signatory to the [nuclear non-proliferation treaty]. I have not violated international laws.”

Details of his clandestine nuclear supply network were “my internal affair and my country’s affair”, he said.

Despite numerous requests from the atomic energy agency and the US, Pakistan has refused access to Dr Khan, who is still considered a national hero.

Until this week he had been confined to his villa in Islamabad, where he lives with his Dutch wife, Henny. He has been subjected to tight restrictions. Telephone calls were monitored, internet access was forbidden and visitors were turned away by soldiers camped at his gate.

But as Mr Musharraf’s powers have ebbed over the past year so have the ties on Dr Khan been loosened.

He emerged this week as Pakistan celebrates the 10th anniversary of the 1998 test that catapulted the volatile nation into the nuclear club.

Speaking by telephone, he displayed a mix of defiant nationalism and religious ardour.

Reports that nuclear technology was smuggled abroad were “Western rubbish”, he said, and unfavourable accounts of his life were “shit piles”. “It doesn’t bother me at all. They don’t like our God, they don’t like our prophet, they don’t like our holy book, the Koran. So how could they like me?”

International nuclear investigators and the Pakistani Government paint a very different picture. In 2005, Mr Musharraf confirmed that Dr Khan had supplied North Korea with centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

This week the International Atomic Energy Agency board received more evidence linking Pakistan with Iran’s nuclear program.

Dr Khan said on Thursday that nuclear technology was freely available in the West to Iran or North Korea. “They were supplying to us, they were supplying to them … [to] anyone who could pay,” he said.

Supporters say he was made a scapegoat for Pakistani generals involved in nuclear trading, but this is the one issue Dr Khan, who directed Pakistan’s nuclear enrichment program for 25 years, still refuses to discuss.

George Tenet, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has described Dr Khan as “at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden”.

Fears of the damage wreaked by his smuggling network were realised when North Korea exploded a nuclear device in October 2006.

In Mr Musharraf’s 2006 memoir, he said he sacked Dr Khan after learning that he was “up to mischief”.

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Tags: Abdul Qadeer Khan, confession, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, nuclear technology