Pakistan nuclear scientist 'confessed under duress': report
A Pakistani nuclear scientist who admitted selling atomic secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran said in an interview with a British newspaper published Friday that he made his confession under duress.
By Agencies |
LONDON: A Pakistani nuclear scientist who admitted selling atomic secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran said in an interview with a British newspaper published Friday that he made his confession under duress.
Abdul Qadeer Khan told The Guardian from Islamabad, where he is under house arrest, that his tearful televised admission in 2004 was forced upon him by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government.
"It was not of my own free will. It was handed into my hand," the 76-year-old was quoted as saying on The Guardian's web site in what the daily said was his first interview with a Western media organisation in four years.
In addition, he said that he never swore to cooperate with investigators from the UN's nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite fears the technology could fall into the hands of extremists.
"Why should I talk to them?" he added in a telephone interview conducted Thursday. "I am under no obligation. We are not a signatory to the NPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty). I have not violated international laws."
Details of his secret nuclear supply network were affairs only for him and his country, he added.
AQ Khan -- dubbed "The Merchant of Menace" by Time magazine -- is still a national hero in Pakistan for giving the country the bomb, ensuring its safety against other nuclear-armed states, including neighbouring India.
He has had little contact with the outside world since confessing to passing secrets to the countries that US President George W. Bush termed the "axis of evil".
Musharraf pardoned him the day after his admission but the government has since refused to allow international investigators to see him.
Khan was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and was taken to hospital with a related infection in February but appears to be recovering.
There are also signs that the scientist's situation could change as Musharraf's grip on power has been loosened by general election defeat, with the new coalition government seemingly set on undoing his policies.
Elsewhere in the interview, Khan dismissed reports that nuclear technology was smuggled abroad as "Western rubbish" and other claims that he owned 43 houses in Islamabad and a hotel in Timbuktu, Mali.
He also claimed that nuclear technology was freely available in the West to Iran or North Korea.
"They were supplying to us, they were supplying to them... (to) anyone who could pay," he said.
But he refused to say whether he was a scapegoat for Pakistani generals involved in the nuclear black market: "I don't want to talk about it. Those things are to forget about."
Abdul Qadeer Khan told The Guardian from Islamabad, where he is under house arrest, that his tearful televised admission in 2004 was forced upon him by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government.
"It was not of my own free will. It was handed into my hand," the 76-year-old was quoted as saying on The Guardian's web site in what the daily said was his first interview with a Western media organisation in four years.
In addition, he said that he never swore to cooperate with investigators from the UN's nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite fears the technology could fall into the hands of extremists.
"Why should I talk to them?" he added in a telephone interview conducted Thursday. "I am under no obligation. We are not a signatory to the NPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty). I have not violated international laws."
Details of his secret nuclear supply network were affairs only for him and his country, he added.
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AQ Khan -- dubbed "The Merchant of Menace" by Time magazine -- is still a national hero in Pakistan for giving the country the bomb, ensuring its safety against other nuclear-armed states, including neighbouring India.
He has had little contact with the outside world since confessing to passing secrets to the countries that US President George W. Bush termed the "axis of evil".
Musharraf pardoned him the day after his admission but the government has since refused to allow international investigators to see him.
Khan was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and was taken to hospital with a related infection in February but appears to be recovering.
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There are also signs that the scientist's situation could change as Musharraf's grip on power has been loosened by general election defeat, with the new coalition government seemingly set on undoing his policies.
Elsewhere in the interview, Khan dismissed reports that nuclear technology was smuggled abroad as "Western rubbish" and other claims that he owned 43 houses in Islamabad and a hotel in Timbuktu, Mali.
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He also claimed that nuclear technology was freely available in the West to Iran or North Korea.
"They were supplying to us, they were supplying to them... (to) anyone who could pay," he said.
But he refused to say whether he was a scapegoat for Pakistani generals involved in the nuclear black market: "I don't want to talk about it. Those things are to forget about."
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