ISLAMABAD: Pakistan yesterday tried to calm Western fears over the release of nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, insisting his clandestine nuclear network has been completely dismantled and he is history.
The Foreign Ministry said Pakistan had investigated Khan’s past proliferation, shared its findings with the UN nuclear watchdog, and put in tight controls to prevent anything similar from happening again.
“We have successfully broken the network that he had set up and today he has no say and has no access to any of the sensitive areas of Pakistan,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said. “A.Q. Khan is history.”
Separately, Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani denied there was government pressure on the Islamabad High Court to release Khan. It was purely a judicial verdict, he said.
Asked about his comments on adverse Western reaction to Khan’s release, the prime minister said: “I have learned about external reactions on the release of the scientist through the media. No foreign dignitary has talked to me in this regard.” International concerns about Khan “would be taken care of,” he added.
Khan emerged from five years of de facto house arrest on Friday after the court declared him a “free citizen” subject to a secret agreement with the government. The move alarmed the new US government, which has made countering the spread of nuclear weapons to countries including Iran a top foreign policy priority.
The White House said President Barack Obama wants assurances from Pakistan that Khan is not involved in the activity that led to his detention. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said Khan remained a “serious proliferation risk.”
A key US lawmaker suggested that US aid to Pakistan could suffer because of Khan’s release. Democratic Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he is “deeply concerned” that Pakistan may be giving Khan “license to resume, perhaps directly, his past actions to aid, abet and profit from the spread of nuclear weapons.”
Congress, he said, will take Pakistan’s refusal to allow US officials to interview Khan “into account as we review and create legislation on US-Pakistan relations and the circumstances under which US assistance is provided to Islamabad.”
The largest point of US leverage with Pakistan is the more than $10 billion in aid Washington has shipped to Islamabad since 2001. Cutting funds probably would damage a fragile, US-backed government. Washington relies on Pakistan to fight extremists operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
US wariness about condemning Pakistan was evident in the reaction by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She said she was “very much concerned” but quickly declined further comment.
— With input from agencies
