Pak nuke proliferator tries to recant

AP/San Antonio Express-News:

Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan says he was forced to confess to passing nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran, a British newspaper reported Friday.

Khan was detained in 2004 after admitting to passing on nuclear technology to other countries and has been held under house arrest in Islamabad. But in an interview with The Guardian, Khan was quoted as saying he was forced into making the confession.

"It was not of my own free will. It was handed into my hand," Khan is quoted as telling the newspaper.

He did not deny that Pakistan had secretly passed nuclear technology to other nations. But he said he did not profit from the smuggling.

"I never sold anything and I never got any money. Nobody has proved this and nobody can prove it," he said.

Experts have said they suspect that Khan was persuaded to make the confession in order to conceal government involvement in the trafficking.

Though reviled in the West, Khan enjoys national hero status in Pakistan, where he is credited with making the country the world's only Islamic nuclear power.

He remains under de facto house arrest, though Pakistan's new government has suggested it will relax the restrictions on him. Khan could not be reached for comment Friday.

The Guardian interview quotes him as saying that he went along with the confession in the "national interest" of Pakistan and because he was promised freedom if he complied.

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He also went along with it to avoid going to Gitmo. There was overwhelming evidence supporting the charges from data gathered from Libya and other sources showing him as providing the material. There was also the DNA of some of the material he provided. The guy does not have much of a case, but I think he is making the noise now because he things the new government will be predisposed to set him free. If so he better watch his back, because he could still wind up in Gitmo.

The Belmont Club also looks at Pakistan a a question of good faith.

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Interestingly, Khan doesn't deny his actions so much as the allegation that they were unauthorized by the Pakistani government. That raises the question of exactly how reliable Pakistan is as an "ally" in the nonproliferation effort.

"Those people who were supposed to know knew it," Khan said about his activities. If true, it would mean Pakistan lied to the U.S. and the international community about its role in providing nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

"Those people who were suppose to know" would certainly include the very top of Pakistan's leadership. In particular, Khan cited a trip to North Korea. "Khan said the North Korean nuclear weapons program was 'well-advanced' before he arrived, as part of an officially sanctioned trip by his government."

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Pakistan has been playing a game of grudging cooperation, doing just enough to not blow its relations with the US. In a way they are just the opposite of Iran which has been planing a cat and mouse game with the US keeping its attacks just below a level that will provoke a 9-11 type response from the US. Pakistan on the other hand coughs up just enough of the bad guys to keep the US money coming in, but not enough to destroy their operations. Whether the US will allow them to continue this double game is now an issue.