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Pakistan pardons nuclear scientist - Weapons experts, UN express alarm
Farah Stockman
Boston Globe
February 6, 2004

WASHINGTON -- President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan yesterday pardoned the country's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed to transferring weapons designs and equipment to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. The pardon outraged proliferations specialists who believed Khan should be punished, but the United States refrained from criticizing its close ally.

While United Nations officials reacted with alarm at the news, saying it pointed to a dangerous international black market in nuclear materials, US officials said it is too early to say whether action should be taken against Pakistan or its nuclear laboratories.

"We think that Pakistan is taking serious efforts to end the activities of a dangerous network," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "It's up to the government of Pakistan to take the necessary measures to ensure that this kind of proliferation will not happen again."

Former and current US officials say the administration is walking a delicate line because Musharraf is a key partner in the war on terrorism and his life already has been threatened by extremist elements. Analysts said Washington's silence on the issue also may indicate that Pakistan is cooperating behind the scenes with international investigators who are trying to shut down the international network of black-market nuclear trade in which Khan participated.

"What's being revealed in Pakistan is . . . a nightmare scenario," said Kenneth Luongo, a former nonproliferation official for the Department of Energy. "Is it in the US interests to swoop down with both feet on Pakistan? I think the Pakistani government itself walked on eggshells."

On Wednesday, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage praised Musharraf in a Tokyo interview with the newspaper Asahi Shimbun and portrayed Khan as a rogue operator whose actions had been successfully halted.

"The government of Pakistan -- we've had significant discussions with them," Armitage said. "They've been very forthright in the last several years with us about proliferation."

But Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called Khan "the tip of the iceberg" in an international secret supply chain. "Dr. Khan was not working alone," ElBaradei told reporters in Vienna. "We still have a lot of work to do."

A confession by Khan, who had been revered in his country as the father of its atomic bomb, was televised in Pakistan on Wednesday. Khan said he acted alone in transferring nuclear secrets to the three countries in an enterprise that spanned two decades. Khan, who has been under house arrest for months after UN and US officials found evidence of the transfers, is widely thought to have negotiated the pardon in exchange for a confession to spare Pakistan an embarrassing trial that would raise questions about how much Musharraf and Pakistan's military knew about the deals.

At a news conference yesterday, Musharraf signaled that he wanted to put the episode behind him.

"I, as president of Pakistan, have decided to pardon Dr. A.Q. Khan, who is our national hero but he has made mistakes, which is unfortunate," Musharraf said. "My job here is number one, to protect my nation, and number two, to protect the honor and dignity of our hero."

While scientists in the United States suspected of transferring sensitive technology are imprisoned in solitary confinement and face the death penalty for treason, Khan apparently will not be punished for the millions of dollars and lucrative properties that he acquired from the illicit barter of nuclear technology. Musharraf also ruled out any UN monitoring of its nuclear program.

"Khan is a sacred cow," Luongo said. "He's being treated by a standard that is totally different than the standard of the United States or any other country."

Last March, the State Department imposed sanctions on Khan's laboratory, but not Pakistan's military, after concluding that it had received missiles from North Korea as part of a weapons exchange. The State Department also concluded that there was insufficient evidence to punish the laboratory for transferring nuclear secrets to North Korea.

But yesterday, in a speech meant to bolster the credibility of his embattled agency, CIA director George Tenet told a Georgetown University audience that his investigators had been tracking Khan for years: "Working with British colleagues, we pieced together the picture of the network, revealing its subsidiaries, its scientists, its front companies, its agents, its finances, and manufacturing plants on three continents," he said. "Khan and his network have been dealt a crushing blow, and several of his senior officers are in custody."

Still, others said they fear that the US government may not yet know the scope of Khan's nuclear sales and that US officials are not doing enough to ensure that Pakistan safeguards its weapons.

US Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, called the confession and pardon "a farce and whitewash."

"To suggest that one man was responsible and now he's sorry doesn't give me an indication that this isn't going to happen in the future," Pallone said in an interview. Pallone said Musharraf's help in the war on terror should not force the United States to ignore dangerous nuclear deals that could prove even more deadly than terrorists.David Kay, the former chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, also condemned Khan's pardon. "I can think of no one who deserves less to be pardoned," Kay told reporters in Washington. He said Khan was "running essentially a Sam's Club" of weapons technology.

Material from Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.