10 March 2005
I got missile blueprints for Pak: Bhutto
- By IANS
Washington, March 9: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said that she personally brought the blueprints from North Korea for her country's missile programme, reports UPI.
In February 2004, when Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of the Pakistan's nuclear bomb, confessed to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, there were media reports suggesting that nuclear technology was given by Pakistan to North Korea in return for missiles from the communist state. Talking to a group of Pakistani journalists in Washington, Ms Bhutto said Pakistan paid "cash" for these blueprints. But Pakistani authorities might have exchanged nuclear technology for missiles later, after the US and other world powers slapped strict economic sanctions on Islamabad following the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, she said.
Ms Bhutto's political rival, Mr Nawaz Sharif, was in power then. "It is quite possible that in 1998, when we were facing a financial crunch because of our nuclear tests, this (exchange of nuclear technology for missiles) might have happened, but not by us. I was out of the government by then, but I have read press reports saying that this has been done. Rather, this has been indirectly admitted in Khan's confession," said Ms Bhutto referring to Khan's televised confession on February 6, 2004.
A state department official when asked for her statement said that Ms Bhutto's "remarks were interesting," but declined to comment further. The former Pakistani Prime Minister said that in 1989 her government formed a missile technology board, which produced only short-range missiles that did not violate the international restrictions on the technology.
Ms Bhutto said in 1993, when she was going to North Korea as Pakistan's Prime Minister, Pakistani scientists working on the country's nuclear and missile programmes asked her to bring blueprints of North Korean missiles that had a longer range than those Pakistan already had.
"These were not nuclear missiles but had the capability to carry nuclear weapons," she said. These were blueprints for short - and medium - range missiles, which Pakistan's archrival, India, did not have at that stage. Initially she was reluctant to ask North Koreans for the blueprints of the missiles. "I told them, our policy is to have parity with India. Unless India tests those missiles, we should not. But I was told that we would not make these missiles. We will only make preparations," said Ms Bhutto. The former Prime Minister, whose father was hanged by military ruler, Gen. Zia ul Huq, and who herself is prevented from returning to Pakistan by Gen. Pervez Musharraf.