AFP, ISLAMABAD: Attempts to prosecute the disgraced father of Pakistan's nuclear program Abdul Qadeer Khan for selling nuclear secrets could backfire by placing the military's alleged role under scrutiny, analysts have warned.
Khan confessed in an 11-page statement at the weekend to selling nuclear expertise to Iran, Libya and North Korea from 1988 to at least 1997, according to the government.
The government is now weighing up whether to prosecute Khan, one of Pakistan's most revered national heroes. It has already sacked him as special adviser on strategic affairs.
But analysts like Riffat Hussain, head of the Strategic Studies Department at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University, said trying Khan would open a “Pandora's box.”
“Pushed to the wall A.Q. Khan can spill the beans, which can complicate matters — especially Islamabad's claims that technology leakage was done without official sanction,” Hussain said.
Khan's daughter left Pakistan last month carrying a cassette recording of Khan “in which he defends himself and levels charges against certain people,” The News daily reported Monday.
It said officials were trying to retrieve the tape “fearing it might damage the country if it fell into the hands of the anti-Pakistan lobby.”
In his statement Khan accused former army chiefs Aslam Beg and Jehangir Karamat of “indirectly instructing” him to proliferate, a senior military official told AFP.
“He named two gentlemen, (retired) generals Beg and Karamat, who were then questioned,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
Beg, who denied in interviews last week approving or being aware that nuclear secrets were being sold off, was army chief from 1988 to 1991, and Karamat was army chief until 1998.
“(Khan) said they were in the know. In one case he said he did it on their instructions, but not directly. They asked someone else and that fellow instructed A.Q. Khan and that man is now dead.”
The middleman was the late brigadier Imtiaz, defence adviser to Benazir Bhutto during her first tenure as prime minister from 1988 to 1990.
“There was no evidence found of what A.Q. Khan was saying, so it could not be sustained,” the official said.
But Beg and Karamat were questioned thoroughly, he added.
“If there is any more evidence of involvement of anyone else they will be questioned, no one is above the law.”
President Pervez Musharraf has adamantly denied that the military or former governments encouraged or approved the transfers of nuclear technology and expertise, blaming civilian scientists and the world black market.
Pakistan's military was “not at all” concerned about possible scrutiny if Khan is put to trial, the military official said.
“The military is keen to put the house in order, if at all someone is involved he must be taken to task and the house must be put in order.”
Officials also insist that no proliferation occurred after 2000, when the military established the National Command Authority (NCA) and command and control structures to secure the country's nuclear program.
“Certainly nothing happened after the NCA was established in 2000,” a government official told AFP Monday.
But observers are sceptical that Khan could have proliferated so widely without military approval.
“What is rather clear to me is that it was not just personal profit that was involved, nor was the action of mere individuals possible,” Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor who campaigns for nuclear disarmament, told AFP.
“Rather it has to be something much deeper than that and which involved state apparatus, because the transfer of such materials is impossible without explicit permission from the security apparatus that constantly surrounds the nuclear establishment, installations and personnel.”
