Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 4, 2004
Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist
A.Q.Khan has implicated the country's military ruler Pervez Musharraf and
three of his predecessor army chiefs in the nuclear transgressions he has
been accused of.
Dr Khan has reportedly told investigators
that Gen Musharraf, and his predecessors- Jehangir Karamat, Abdul Waheed
Kakkar and Mirza Aslam Beg - were among those who knew and approved of
his dealings with North Korea and Iran.
"No debriefings can be complete
unless all of them were brought in and questioned together," Dr Khan has
told investigators, according to accounts from Pakistan.
Dr Khan's charge appears to be his
counter-gambit against the country's military establishment, which has
sought to pin the proliferation charge solely on rogue scientists while
absolving itself.
Pakistani officials on Sunday told
journalists that Dr Khan had signed a 12-page confession but the scientist
himself is being held incommunicado.
Dr Khan's implication of Gen Musharraf-revealed
through his friends- is also potentially embarrassing for Washington, which
on Monday indicated that it is ready to forgive and forget Pakistan's nuclear
transgressions and place its faith in Gen Musharraf.
Despite widespread belief in the
non-proliferation community that the entire Pakistani establishment, especially
the military, was in cahoots with Dr Khan's activities, the Bush administration
was backing Islamabad in its posthaste clean up.
"We welcome the Pakistani investigation,"
state department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a briefing on Monday,
adding that "It marks the sign of how seriously the government takes the
commitments that President Musharraf has made to make sure that his nation
is not a source of prohibited technologies for other countries."
There was no sign that Washington
was particularly perturbed at the gravity of the leaks or the official
complicity that most experts believed in.
Although there is speculation that
Gen Musharraf has cracked down on Dr Khan and his cohorts at the behest
of the United States, Mr Boucher distanced the administration from the
developments in Pakistan.
Asked if the US wanted Dr Khan to
be prosecuted, Mr. Boucher said "It will be for Pakistan to decide what
to do,".
