AQ letter reveals Pak's N-tryst with China
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WASHINGTON: In an angry, bitter, self-exculpatory letter he wrote to his wife, Pakistan's nuclear architect A Q Khan has seriously implicated the Pakistani military and the Chinese government in proliferation of nuclear technology and material, and instructed her to take a "tough stand" if Pakistani establishment "plays any mischief with me".
"Tell them the bastards first used us and now playing dirty games with us," Khan concludes in a letter to his Dutch wife Henny, asking her to contact the media, in particular British journalist Simon Henderson, his confidante for many years, in a December 2003 letter.
Henderson, custodian of many of Khan's secrets revealed to him as an "insurance" against harassment or worse by the Pakistani establishment, has periodically leaked them to the western media each time Islamabad has turned the screws on Khan, who has been under house detention and close watch ever since Pakistan's proliferation activities were exposed early last decade.
In the latest such expose, Henderson last week provided Fox News with Khan's letter to his wife in which the nuclear engineer reveals a stunning degree of proliferation between Islamabad andBeijing, evidently with government compliance. Pakistan has insisted that the proliferation was a rogue operation by Khan and the government or the military had nothing to do with it.
But in the letter Khan says, "You know we had cooperation with China for 15 years. We put up a centrifuge plant at Hanzhong. We sent 135 C-130 plane loads of machines , inverters, valves, flow meters, pressure gauges . Our teams stayed there for weeks to help and their teams stayed here for weeks at a time. Late minister Liu We, V M (vice minister) Li Chew, vice minister Jiang Shengjie used to visit us."
The C-130 military transport planes were given to Pakistan by the US under a military aid program; Washington has continued to lavish Islamabad with such aid even after reports of its misuse. In fact, documents relating to Pakistan's proliferation through much of the 1990s suggest US was asleep on the watch through much of the nuclear exchanges involving Pakistan, China, North Korea , Iran, and Libya, or simply chose to close its eyes.
Khan also reveals that "the Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50kg enriched uranium , gave us 10 tonnes of UF6 (natural) and 5 tonnnes of UF6 (3%). Chinese helped Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in setting up UF6 plant, production reactor for plutonium and reprocessing plant." Further, Khan said "Gen Jehangir Karamat (chief of army staff 1996-8 ) took $3 million through me from N Koreans and asked me to give them some drawings and machines" . In a separate letter to Fox News, Karamat has denied the allegation.
Many of these disclosures are elaborated in detail during Khan's "questioning" , under pressure from Washington , by the ISI in a report to mollify the US. Khan's letter to his wife was evidently meant to warn the Pakistani establishment that no harm should come to him and his family. "They might try to get rid of me to cover up all the things (dirty) they got done by me in connection with Iran, Libya & N Korea," Khan writes to his wife.
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timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/AQ-letter-reveals-Paks-N-tryst-with-China/articleshow/10122090.cms
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