Tuesday, January 17, 2006
‘US knew all about Khan network’
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: Washington was keeping a close watch on Dr AQ Khan all through the years but finds it “politically inconvenient” do admit that now, according to a report in an American magazine.
William Langewiesche of Atlantic Monthly quotes a US source as saying somewhere in the 1980s, “We have a very strong interest in Dr Khan and the Khan Research Laboratories. We pay very close attention to his work. In fact, our interest in this man is so intense that you can assume if he takes a toilet break and goes to the john, we know about it. We know where he is.”
Langewiesche writes, “Though it would be politically inconvenient to admit this now, the United States was aware not only of Khan’s peddling of nuclear wares to Iran but also of the likely involvement of the army and the government of Pakistan. (Mark) Hibbs (an American reporter) has reported that the US ambassador to Islamabad from 1988 to 1991, Robert B Oakley, went around the embassy fuming, ‘They sold that stuff to those bastards!’ (a reference to Iran) and believes that Oakley expressed the same emotion more politely at the National Security Council. Oakley ... does not recall knowing of the sales to Iran when he was ambassador, and says he was not asked to raise the matter with the Pakistani government. For political reasons more than for reasons of national security, these are some of the most closely held secrets in the United States. For the same reasons, the apparent lack of good information is pointed to as yet another US intelligence failure ... when in reality t he CIA knew fairly well what was happening.”
Langewiesche quotes former finance minister Dr Mubashar Hasan as saying that the late Munir Ahmed Khan, “AQ Khan’s despised rival” and head of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, repeatedly complained to him in the late 1980s that “AQ Khan was corrupt and ... that he was involved in selling Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons technology abroad”.
Langewiesche says of the offer allegedly made on behalf of Dr Khan to Iraq that it was not taken up because “the Iraqis suspected that the offer might be a scam or a trap; they asked for a sample of the goods - possibly a component or blueprints. They never received the sample, because the Gulf War then erupted.”
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