There’s no evidence to suggest that Pakistan allowed A.Q. Khan’s network to sell nuclear technology to fund its nuclear programme, the lead author of a dossier on the activities of the network told Dawn on Tuesday.
“We did not assess that Pakistan purposely sold the technology to raise money for its nuclear programme,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, who on Tuesday launched in Washington his dossier on Dr A.Q. Khan and the network he allegedly headed.
Mr Fitzpatrick, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, also said that investigators had found no link between the Khan network of nuclear proliferators and the terrorist group that caused the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, May 8: There’s no evidence to suggest that Pakistan allowed A.Q. Khan’s network to sell nuclear technology to fund its nuclear programme, the lead author of a dossier on the activities of the network told Dawn on Tuesday.
“We did not assess that Pakistan purposely sold the technology to raise money for its nuclear programme,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, who on Tuesday launched in Washington his dossier on Dr A.Q. Khan and the network he allegedly headed.
Mr Fitzpatrick, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, also said that investigators had found no link between the Khan network of nuclear proliferators and the terrorist group that caused the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
“We never saw any suggestion that Dr Khan ever met Al Qaeda leaders,” he said. “There’s no link between the Khan network and Al Qaeda.”
He said that the Khan network also had no links with Umma Taamir-e-Nao, an NGO whose members allegedly met Osama bin Laden and discussed the
production of nuclear weapons with him.
In the report that he wrote for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Mr Fitzpatrick identified Dr Khan as the head of the group that sold nuclear technology and equipment to Iran, Libya and North Korea but said that “the network’s sales to Libya … were almost exclusively private business transactions, beyond state control.”
The centrifuges sold to Libya were produced in Malaysia, Turkey, Europe and South Africa and trans-shipped in Dubai, the report added.
But the report also identified some ‘gray areas’, adding that “past Pakistani governments’ knowledge of and even involvement in A. Q. Khan’s secondary proliferation activities remains open to debate.”
In an interview to Dawn, Mr Fitzpatrick said that former army chief Gen. Aslam Beg
‘encouraged’ the Khan network’s sales to other countries.
“Ego, money, nationalism and a sense of Islamic fraternity” motivated Dr Khan and his supporters to sell nuclear technology to other Muslim countries, he said. “Different motivations in different cases.”
Mr Fitzpatrick claimed that Pakistan had made a nuclear bomb 10 years after establishing its nuclear programme. Pakistan, he said, also had established a procurement network to keep its programme running and was “still using it to acquire foreign technology.”
He said that Pakistan would stop nuclear proliferation only if it determined that India was no longer doing so. “Realistically, India may not be very enthusiastic about doing so. So, if I had to bet, I would bet on that no end to nuclear race” in South Asia in the near future, he added.
Mr Fitzpatrick said that about 50 members of the Khan network were from Dubai, Turkey, Malaysia, Switzerland and Germany while 22 of them were from Pakistan.
But investigation focused on Pakistan because “the actual equipment and the leader were from Pakistan”, he said.
Mr Fitzpatrick said that North Korea’s nuclear test conducted last year was “not based on any technology that Dr Khan provided to them”.
But he said the investigators did not know if Dr Khan had provided a test design to North Korea which could be altered for a plutonium-based test as well. Pakistan has a uranium-based nuclear programme while the device North Korea tested was plutonium-based.
Mr Fitzpatrick said that the nuclear deal that India and the US were negotiating “will exacerbate Pakistan’s concerns that it will fall behind India … and will make it harder for Pakistan to enter into an agreement to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons”.
He said he understood that Pakistan ‘aspires’ to have a similar deal that India has been offered but before it happens, the international community will have to have “more confidence in the command and control system that Pakistan has put in place”.
He said that Pakistan had established “a very strong” command and control system and Pakistani officials had done a good job in explaining this system to international observers in Washington and in Brussels.
“But concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of religious extremists will remain as long as there’s instability in the country,” he added.
Commenting on an advertisement in some Pakistani newspapers about missing nuclear materials, Mr Fitzpatrick said that materials like this that are used in agricultural and medical labs and were called radioactive sources but they could not be used for making nuclear weapons.
“But the terrorists, if they get hold of such materials, can make a dirty bomb by strapping dynamite to it. This cannot kill many people but it can cause a scare, which can kill many.”
