Abdul Qadeer Khan

Islamabad, Jan. 31: Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the “father of the country’s nuclear bomb” was today removed from his post as adviser to the government on nuclear affairs, a government official said.

“In the background of the investigations into alleged acts of nuclear proliferation by a few individuals and to facilitate those in investigations in a free and objective manner, Dr Khan, special adviser to the Prime Minister on strategic programme has ceased to hold the office,” said the announcement issued after a lengthy meeting of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) headed by President Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf had convened the meeting — attended by Prime Minister Mir Zafrullah Jamali, services’ chiefs and key federal ministers — to put at rest an issue that seemed to have galvanised the people of Pakistan since November last year.

Khan had founded the Kahutta Research Laboratories (KRL) in 1976 and headed the clandestine uranium enrichment facility located 25 km east of Islamabad until 2001 when Musharraf appointed him as his adviser on nuclear affairs.

Born in 1936 at Bhopal, Khan has been in the eye of the storm since the US began vigorously pursuing its nuclear non-proliferation agenda, particularly after Pakistan conducted six nuclear tests in May 1998 in response to five by India in the same month.

Khan spent several years in western Europe, including Germany and Holland, studying nuclear physics and metallurgical sciences before returning to Pakistan to lead an ambitious nuclear programme in the mid Seventies.

The project took off soon after India exploded its first nuclear device in 1974. Pakistan’s close contacts with militant Arab states such as Libya gave rise to suspicions that Khan was working on an Islamic nuclear bomb. He was formally charged by the Dutch government of having misappropriated classified information when he was a student at Delft University.

The court eventually absolved him of the charges in 1989 after some of his former professors in Holland, Germany and Britain testified in his favour, declaring that the information gathered by Khan was general reference material and not classified.

The soft-spoken metallurgist and some scientists of the KRL again came under sharp focus after the Tehran government disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sources of supplies for its nuclear programme, which also included some Pakistan names.

The authorities in Pakistan began debriefings in November when they first picked up Mohammad Farooq, Khan’s right-hand man, who had served as the procurement director at KRL.

This led to the arrests of two dozen scientists and officials who were then interrogated which the officials called debriefings. Most of the detainees had been released but Khan’s five trusted aides are still being debriefed.

The NCA reiterated Pakistan’s strong resolve and commitment in adherence to international agreements of non-proliferation. “It was emphasised that Pakistan’s nuclear capability was solely for purpose of deterrence of aggression against Pakistan,” said the official statement.

The meeting observed that Pakistan took its international obligations with the utmost seriousness and in this regard the government “condemns and distances itself in categorical terms from individual acts of indiscretion in the past”.