Author: Shyam Bhatia in London
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: December 11, 2003
URL: http://us.rediff.com/news/2003/dec/11shyam.htm
The arrest of two top Pakistani
nuclear scientists in Islamabad has been confirmed by Pakistani sources
in London, who say the men have been accused of passing on nuclear secrets
to Iran.
Dr Farooq Mohammed and Dr Yasin
Chohan were key members of the team responsible for Pakistan's 1998 nuclear
tests.
They are described as director and
laboratory director respectively of Pakistan's secret uranium enrichment
facilities at Kahuta, situated between Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
The two scientists are the latest
in a list of nuclear experts detained at the behest of the US.
Two years ago under US pressure
the Pakistani authorities arrested Dr Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood, who had
designed the Khusab nuclear power station, and subsequently offered his
services to the Taliban regime in Kabul.
One of his colleagues who worked
with him in Kabul was shipped out to the Pakistan embassy in Myanmar before
US counterintelligence and terrorism experts had a chance of getting to
him.
Mohammed and Chohan have worked
under the 'father' of the Pakistani nuclear programme, Bhopal- born
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Khan did much of his early research
at a uranium research centre in Almelo, Holland, jointly owned by a three-nation
European consortium, before he returned to Pakistan.
The uranium enrichment plant subsequently
set up in Kahuta, also known as the AQ Khan research laboratories, drew
heavily on the expertise that Khan acquired in Almelo.
A question mark rises over Khan
now that such senior members of his team have been arrested. In recent
months Khan himself has been under suspicion over allegations that he transferred
nuclear secrets to North Korea as well as earlier to Iran.
According to the Pakistani sources
two FBI members were part of the team that detained Mohammed and Chohan
in Islamabad on Wednesday. Mohammed had just returned home after attending
a relative's funeral.
The Pakistani authorities have yet
to confirm the arrests, but opposition senators from the country's upper
house of parliament have lodged a protest, saying the arrests are a grave
threat to national security.
The Pakistani foreign ministry said
in a statement that Islamabad has an uncompromising policy not to transfer
nuclear technologies to third countries.
A spokesman for the ministry refused
to comment on why the US has imposed sanctions on the Kahuta laboratories
after accusing its scientists of providing material support to a country
or people trying to develop weapons of mass destruction or the missiles
that carry them.