Tuesday, October 25, 2005
New Delhi wants A Q Khan questioned
Indrani Bagchi
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
NEW DELHI: India has demanded that Pakistani scientist A Q Khan be interrogated comprehensively on the nuclear network that he ran under cover of the Pakistani establishment.
As the world moves inexorably to a November vote at the IAEA on Iran, the Indian government for the first time expressed its concern about a nuclear Pakistan helping Iran's hitherto clandestine nuclear programme.
Foreign secretary Shyam Saran said on Monday, "It is important that issues which involve the Pakistan-based A Q Khan network are satisfactorily clarified. We see no reason why there should be an insistence on personal interviews with Iranian scientists but an exception granted to a man who has been accused of running a 'nuclear Wal-Mart'."
Throwing the gauntlet, Saran said in a major policy statement on non-proliferation that India would not accept "pursuit of clandestine activities in respect to WMD-related technologies. Our own security interests have been seriously undermined by the clandestine nuclear weapons programme in our neighbourhood aided and abetted by some NPT signatories themselves."
It was a thinly veiled broadside against China and Pakistan that will not go unnoticed.
As India prepares to don the mantle of a global power, it is finally finding its voice on crucial international issues that threaten its security. The Khan network was unravelled in 2004 but apart from quietly recording that India had known it all along, the government did not want to rock the India-Pakistan peace process by demanding satisfaction on this issue.
It is clear now that India will stick to its guns on Iran at the IAEA in November. Saran said India was making all efforts to get Iran to resume dialogue with the EU-3.
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