Shaheedi writes, “Pakistan rejects the mindset that is bent upon maligning the country. It is a well-known fact that illegal networks of nuclear technology have been operating in more than 30 countries and predate Dr Khan. This fact has been acknowledged by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. I can say with full responsibility that Pakistan has successfully dismantled the AQ Khan network. I wish the writer has gone through the recently released report of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, which has given a balanced view in detail on the issue. His attention may also be drawn to the arrests of Indian nationals about a few weeks ago on charges of exporting missile technology from the United States to India.”
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: Pakistan has successfully dismantled the AQ Khan network, according to Pakistani embassy spokesman Akram Shaheedi, who also refutes a recently published report that Dr Khan made $100 million through nuclear trading.
In a rejoinder to Arnaud de Borchgrave’s May 5 article in the Washington Times, Shaheedi rejects the allegation that Pakistan acquired missile technology from North Korea by trading nuclear materials and know-how. He declares that all payments made by Pakistan were in “hard cash and there was absolutely no trading of a Pakistani nuke for Korean missiles.” He also rejects the finding that Dr Khan made 13 trips to North Korea in 2004 where he “traded” the deal between the two countries. Shaheedi points out that de Borchgrave has picked out this figure from an article by Gaurav Kampani, a Canadian national of Indian origin, who used this figure without substantiating his claim. Dr Khan went to North Korea only as apart of the Pakistani delegation assigned to negotiate the acquisition of missile technology, the Pakistani official asserts.
Shaheedi writes, “Pakistan rejects the mindset that is bent upon maligning the country. It is a well-known fact that illegal networks of nuclear technology have been operating in more than 30 countries and predate Dr Khan. This fact has been acknowledged by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. I can say with full responsibility that Pakistan has successfully dismantled the AQ Khan network. I wish the writer has gone through the recently released report of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, which has given a balanced view in detail on the issue. His attention may also be drawn to the arrests of Indian nationals about a few weeks ago on charges of exporting missile technology from the United States to India.”
In a clarificatory note, the Washington Times editor writes that a “more careful reading” of the de Borchgrave article would show that Dr Khan made 13 trips to North Korea “through” and not “in” 2004. The editor writes, “He (Shaheedi) also accuses Mr de Borchgrave of cherry-picking information ‘here and there’. The information about Dr Khan, as he wrote, came from a carefully researched book titled ‘Rapacites,’ which is French for greed, written by Jean-Louis Gergorin, one of France’s leading strategic thinkers. He, in turn, had investigated the Luxembourg clearinghouse ‘Clearstream,’ which cleared much of Dr Khan’s ill-gotten gains from supplying nuclear know-how to America’s enemies. Mr de Borchgrave’s mother was born in Rawalpindi and many of his Pakistani sources in the military, in intelligence, in politics and academia are friends of long standing. That is how he happens to know that a disillusioned Pakistani VIP was in Washington recently to brief the intelligence community about the Inter-Services Intelligence agency’s current affiliations with a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.”
