Pakistan is still relying largely on illicit sources and smuggling routes to maintain its nuclear weapons making capability, Mark Fitzpatrick, editor of a research dossier Nuclear markets: Pakistan, A. Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks - a net assessment” has alleged.
The dossier was launched in London Wednesday at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), UK’s leading think tank.
Afzal Khan writes from Islamabad
Pakistan is still relying largely on illicit sources and smuggling routes to maintain its nuclear weapons making capability, Mark Fitzpatrick, editor of a research dossier Nuclear markets: Pakistan, A. Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks - a net assessment” has alleged.
The dossier was launched in London Wednesday at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), UK’s leading think tank.
Fitzpatrick said Pakistan was facing serious restrictions at the international level by the countries producing and exporting nuclear technology and raw materials.
"Khan's associates appeared to have escaped law enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black market business", he said.
Answering a question on how much did Dr Khan make from his ‘private’ nuclear enterprise, the editor of the dossier said he had information about $100 million only which he was said to have received from Libya.
The dossier said if anyone can claim the title of “Father of the Pakistani bomb”, it should be former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on the political side and Munir Ahmad Khan on the technical side. Dr AQ Khan is wrongly given this credit.
“Dr AQ Khan is not the father of the Pakistan bomb. It is ZA Bhutto,” it said, focusing on the efforts of Bhutto since 1958, when he became a minister in the Ayub cabinet.
Dr AQ Khan can only be accorded many epithets, including “founder of Pakistan uranium enrichment programme”. It said Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) was founded in 1954.
But it was under ZA Bhutto’s leadership as minister for mineral resources that PAEC set up the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Technology in 1960 and sent hundreds of students abroad to obtain degrees in physics and other nuclear-related science disciplines.
When he took over in December 1971 in the aftermath of traumatic military defeat by India, one of ZA Bhutto’s first priorities was to launch a nuclear programme.
Fitzpatrick sidestepped a question which wondered how a dossier on clandestine nuclear networks could be considered complete without the mention of the network which provided Israel with its bomb.
He, however, agreed with the suggestion that most of the nuclear bomb making capable countries, including the US, had acquired their capability through illicit routes.
Fitzpatrick mumbled some vague answer when he was asked how did the CIA miss noticing the clandestine network of A. Q. Khan all those years (the US Presidents were certifying annually from 1981 to 1990 that Pakistan had not acquired N-weapon capability presumably on the CIA information) when in fact it was the CIA itself which had finally confronted President Gen Musharraf in 2003 with documentary proof of the illicit goings on.
The dossier which runs into 176 pages mentions few significant new findings and in conclusion makes it even clearer that without full details of the Khan’s confession, the world was not going to know much about his network or other such enterprises, some of which are suspected to be still in existence.
While confirming that Pakistan is still operating illicit nuclear routes, the dossier states that confidential cooperation (with IAEA) will help the agency and western intelligence bodies establish the answers to the key unanswered questions of how much help Dr Khan gave Iran, which other countries or individuals had access to the nuclear bomb design, to whom else he might have offered nuclear technology, and what became of the missing centrifuge components when the network dissolved.
“If Pakistan were to release Dr Khan’s confession and details about the government’s investigation and law-enforcement actions, this transparency would help allay suspicions of the government involvement in Dr Khan’s proliferation activities,” the dossier states rather helplessly.
It said Pakistan's motivation to acquire nuclear weapons was sparked in large part by competition with India. Although the seeds of Pakistan's weapons programme can be traced back to the early 1960s, the major boost came in December 1971 after Pakistan's traumatic defeat by India.
