Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

1 Frontline Pakistan
to visit the highly guarded secret facility. 25 Pakistani officials insist
that they received the first indication about nuclear technology being
transferred in 2000, when the ISI conducted a raid on an air force
aircraft that was allegedly carrying nuclear material to North Korea.
Dr Khan was reprimanded, but no action was taken against him at
that point. 26 This is quite intriguing. How could he use an air force
plane without the knowledge and consent of the military leadership?
Pakistan later developed its own medium- and long-distance missile
system based on North Korean technology, which is now the mainstay
of the country’s nuclear weapons delivery system.
A few years earlier, before international attention began focusing
on the dangers of proliferation, some Pakistani scientists had handed
out brochures at trade shows in Germany and elsewhere ‘that implied
that they were willing to sell sensitive centrifuge know-how or items
of equipment’. The Pakistani leaders, who had denied for years that
the scientists at the country’s secret nuclear facility were peddling
advanced nuclear technology, had ignored the most conspicuous
piece of evidence. The brochure was quietly circulated to aspiring
nuclear states, and a network of middlemen bore the official seal
‘Government of Pakistan’ and a photograph of Dr Khan. It offered
for sale components that were spin-offs from Pakistan’s three-decade
project to build nuclear stockpiles of enriched uranium. 27
It was in October 2003 that international investigators stumbled
upon the most substantive evidence about his role in spreading
nuclear technology. The information, pieced together from limited
inspections and the documents turned over to the IAEA, showed that a
centrifuge of Pakistani design was used at the Iranian nuclear facility. 28
Although Iranian documents submitted to the IAEA made no reference
to Pakistan itself, the suspicion about the origin of the centrifuge
inevitably fell on Pakistan’s main nuclear facility, KRL, which had
mastered the requisite technology and where Pakistan’s atom bomb
was developed. For more than 18 years, Pakistan’s role had been well
hidden from American intelligence agencies.
Musharraf was stunned when, during a meeting on the sidelines
of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) summit conference in
Kuala Lumpur in September 2003, Iran’s President Khatami cautioned
him about an IAEA investigation into a possible Pakistan link with
the Iranian nuclear programme. 29 For many years, Pakistan had
rejected allegations of the involvement of its top scientists in nuclear
proliferation. At about the same time, the US Deputy Secretary of