Pakistan fires nuclear-weapons scientist

By John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
The Washington Post

	Abdul Qadeer Khan
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's most prominent nuclear-weapons scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was fired from his government job yesterday after Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, affirmed investigators' findings that Khan had sold nuclear secrets to Iran and Libya, officials said.

Khan, the flamboyant, German-trained metallurgist who is widely regarded as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, was dismissed from his post as a science adviser to the prime minister following a meeting of the Nuclear Command Authority, which is composed of senior military and civilian officials and is chaired by Musharraf.

But the participants postponed a decision on whether to pursue criminal charges against Khan, who investigators say made millions of dollars from the sale of blueprints and other technical assistance routed to Iran and Libya by means of a nuclear black market in Dubai and — in the case of Iran — through a program that was supposed to be limited to nonmilitary nuclear technology. At least one other nuclear scientist, Mohammed Farooq, is accused of helping Khan in the scheme.

Khan hasn't been placed under arrest, but authorities have told him to remain at his Islamabad home for security reasons and increased security around him, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said. Six other scientists and security officials also have been detained.

Musharraf is under heavy domestic pressure to go easy on the scientists, especially Khan, who is considered a national hero for his pivotal role in developing the uranium-enrichment technology that allowed the country to achieve nuclear parity with arch rival India.

At the same time, Musharraf is eager to remain on good terms with the United States and to demonstrate Pakistan's commitment to curbing the spread of nuclear technology, in part by showing that he takes the allegations against Khan seriously.

Pakistan launched its investigation in November after the International Atomic Energy Agency turned up evidence that Pakistani scientists had helped Iran and Libya design centrifuges used to make enriched uranium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons. U.S. officials also suspect Pakistani scientists of providing nuclear assistance to North Korea, although Pakistani officials deny the charge.

Khan, 67, has a history of strained relations with Musharraf, who in 2001 forced him from his job as director of the A.Q. Khan Laboratory, the uranium-enrichment facility that Khan founded nearly three decades ago following his return to Pakistan from the Netherlands, where he acquired the designs for centrifuges to equip the lab.

His current job amounted to little more than a sinecure. "I swat flies and read newspapers," an associate recalled him saying about his duties several years ago.

Still, as recently as Friday, even some of Musharraf's senior advisers were urging the president to avoid any action that smacked of "public disgrace," as one Cabinet minister put it in an interview.

"How can you blame a person who enjoyed explicit authority from the state to beg, borrow or steal for no less than 20 years to deliver his nation its nuclear bomb?" added a serving army general. "What harm has he caused Pakistan by extending the same knowledge to another Islamic country?"

Pakistani officials also acknowledge that a full public airing of the technology sales could prove embarrassing for the military, which has long had principal responsibility for the multitiered security system — overseen by two army brigadiers and a special detachment of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency — that surrounds the top-secret Khan laboratory.

Khan has made no public comment on the allegations.

Material from The New York Times and The Associated Press is included in this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company