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"Our nuclear programme has ensured our
survival, our security, and our sovereignty...
I am proud to have contributed to it together
with my patriotic and able colleagues," the
man accused of running a nuclear blackmarket said
in an interview.
Khan, who in 2004 accepted sole responsibility
for providing nuclear know-how to Iran, Libya,
and North Korea, was pardoned by then president
Pervez Musharraf but was placed under house arrest
at the behest of the US. However, Islamabad has
refused to make him available for questioning
by the US.
"Yes, I fully agree," he said in the
interview published in the inaugural issue of
"Newsweek Pakistan" when told that most
Pakistanis believe Pakistan being a nuclear state
has served as a deterrent to conventional war
with India.
Asked to comment on the popular theory that Pakistan
is a nation with no sustainable identity, Khan
said: "Pakistan was not an artificially created
country. We, the Muslims in India, were a separate
nation with a distinct culture, history, social
order, and heritage."
"By any definition we were a nation. Unfortunately,
selfish, narrow-minded leaders broke it into ethnic
groups, which led to exploitation. Nuclear weapons
made the nation walk with heads held high."
Rejecting as "a Western myth and one of
their phobias" the fears that nuclear weapons
can fall into the wrong hands, Khan said: "A
nuclear weapon - good or dirty - is a highly complicated
and sophisticated device. A large number of parts
are needed, and expertise is required to assemble
such a device."
"Even scientists and engineers without the
relevant experience are not able to do this, let
alone to talk of illiterate, untrained terrorists."
Describing the Afghan War as a blessing for Pakistan's
nuclear programme, Khan said: "It was not
that the Western countries actively supported
it but that they were too scared and occupied
with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and its
future consequences to actively oppose it."
"Neither the Americans nor the British had
a clue about the status of our programme until
1990," Khan claimed.
But After the Afghan War they slapped sanctions
on Pakistan to extract concessions from Benazir
Bhutto's government, but then president Ghulam
Ishaq Khan and then army chief Gen. Aslam Beg
"frustrated their nefarious designs".
"The term 'Islamic Bomb' was mischievously
coined by the Western world to frighten the rest
of the world and to portray Muslims, and Pakistan,
as terrorists who should not possess an atom bomb,"
he said as "the Western world is united in
Muslim-bashing and ridiculing Islam and its golden
values".
Khan also accused the American and British intelligence
agencies of having "tried to bribe and buy
two of our scientists, who refused all sorts of
incentives and reported the matter to me".
"Nobody ever penetrated Kahuta (the site
of Pakistan's main nuclear facility), nor could
they do so," he said, suggesting, "The
Americans, contrary to their tall claims, were
totally in the dark about the status of our programme."
"Majors -- or even generals, for that matter
-- had no access to sensitive and classified information
... (Kahuta) or PAEC (Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission)
were never a department store where one could
go and pick up a bomb!," he said.
"Majors -- or even generals, for that matter --
had no access to sensitive and classified information
... (Kahuta) or PAEC (Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission)
were never a department store where one could
go and pick up a bomb!," he said.
Sources in New Delhi however say that India had
a clear indication in 1987 that Pakistan had developed
a nuclear weapons programme despite its promises
with the US not to do so. India had shared this
information with the US also, which chose to ignore
it for whatever reasons till finally the CIA had
to admit before the US Congress that Islamabad
had nuclear weapons in violation of its agreements
with Washington, which had given massive arms
and financial aid to Pakistan.
(IANS)
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