Mr Shyam Bhatia’s interview with Ms Benazir Bhutto
Mr Shyam Bhatia had extensive exchanges with Ms Benazir Bhutto which he put together in an interview that was published in the South Asia Tribune in May 2004. The American’s who had exposed Pakistan’s perfidious nuclear proliferation have, for their own reasons, gone along with General Musharraf’s act that this was the act of a maverick scientist without the knowledge of the Government in Islamabad. This interview nailed the lie being propogated by both Governments.
The text of the Interview is reproduced below.
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has admitted that she introduced the infamous Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, to the international nuclear black market, specially the scientists belonging to broken up states of the Soviet Union, trying to sell Uranium. In a long interview with an Indian web site, rediff.com, published in a series of five articles, Benazir also disclosed a plan made in 1989 to kidnap famous nuclear scientist Dr AQ Khan from Pakistan, to keep him in a Muslim country and to blame her government for the failure to protect him.
“There was one other thing I may have inadvertently done [and that] was introduce them (ISI) to the international black market,” she told Shyam Bhatia, who interviewed her in London.
“At that time my parliamentarians would come to me in Parliament House and say they had been approached by Russian scientists wanting to sell enriched uranium, this was in ‘89-90. There were Soviet scientists who were starving, they weren’t given their salaries, they were poor, they wanted to meet me and I didn’t want to meet them. “They approached the government, parliamentarians, so here they come and tell me, ‘We don’t have to worry if we can’t make uranium, we can buy uranium. Okay?’ I thought it was a trap set up by the intelligence. So I then sent them to the ISI to investigate.”
Benazir recalled: “Unfortunately, if it was not a trap, I introduced the ISI to the network. I sent the information to the ISI and I never got a report back. I assumed it was a trap because I never got a report back. I remember this incident because it didn’t happen just once. The first time I said ‘no, no’ and thought it would die. But it was persistent and when it was persistent I sent it to the ISI to investigate.” Revealing the plot to kidnap Dr AQ Khan, Benazir Bhutto said the plan involved some journalists who were to be used to take Dr AQ Khan out of Pakistan for performing a pilgrimage. But she clarified that the country was not Saudi Arabia.
“In 1989 I learned from one of the journalists who were tied to the elements trying to overthrow my government that one of them planned to take AQ Khan to a Muslim country and keep him there. They told him they would take him on a pilgrimage — it’s not Saudi Arabia — they would go for a pilgrimage and keep him there. “I saw this as an attempt to embarrass me by suggesting that Benazir Bhutto is anti-Pakistan and she’s a security threat and she’s responsible for the disappearance of our nuclear scientist. So I passed orders that no scientist could leave the country without government permission. And security guards,” the former prime minister revealed.
The following is the full text of Benazir interview:
Can you tell us how Pakistan started its nuclear program?
Actually, India started developing its nuclear program in 1961 or ‘62, maybe even earlier. My father was a minister in 1962 and he tried to get Pakistan to also start a program from 1962.
The Indians had not detonated anything, but he negotiated and tried to get material from different countries. He was able to get a peaceful nuclear reactor from Canada that was put under Kanupp [Karachi nuclear power plant] inspection. He was also able to talk to other countries — I don’t wish to go into the names of those countries — but he talked to other countries from 1962 to help Pakistan develop a nuclear program.
In four years he left Ayub’s [military ruler Field Marshal Ayub Khan] Cabinet. That was in 1966. By the time he came back to office in December 1971, this was not his priority because Pakistan had disintegrated and our priority was to first consolidate residual Pakistan so that it would not break.
In those days there was a lot of talk with Manekshaw [Indian army chief General S H F J Manekshaw, later promoted to Field Marshal] saying he would get another present for the Indian people, and the ANP [Awami National Party of Khan Abdul Wali Khan] was getting support from Afghanistan, which was blessed by the Soviet Union, to spur secessionist movements in the Frontier [North-West Frontier Province] and Baluchistan.
So we had a lot of other priorities, the main one of which was to save Pakistan. Therefore my father didn’t concentrate on this nuclear thing. I was then at Harvard, I used to come back for the summer vacations.
In 1974, when the Indians detonated the nuclear device, my father announced at a press conference that Pakistan will develop a bomb “even if we have to eat grass.”
When did the scientific work start?
In 1974 my father had already got a group of scientists who had been working on the nuclear reactor and I think it was the plutonium process. This was in the context of the PAEC [Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission] which he established. Actually, it wasn’t the PAEC, it was still only Kanupp. He established PAEC and he established Kahuta Laboratories.
So there were laboratories established at Kahuta, which were renamed AQ Khan Laboratories much later. I knew of it as Kahuta laboratories by ‘77, I don’t know what it was before.
The main person around it was Munir Ahmed Khan, who became chairman of PAEC, and my father put together the team of scientists for this and he followed two paths to nuclear status. One was the reprocessing plant and he negotiated an agreement with France for a reprocessing plant and then he did a uranium enrichment plant.
How did AQ Khan get involved?
When he learnt that we were to make the nuclear bomb and eat grass if need be, he approached my father and offered his services. He must have flown in, I don’t know how he did it. He said, ‘I can assist’ and later from press reports it was known that he had been working and he had some blueprints. Right? But he offered. Maybe because he was a patriotic Pakistani who, hearing that the prime minister of Pakistan wanted to make [one], gave his own.
Didn’t (then US secretary of state) Henry Kissinger threaten Pakistan in those days if it went ahead with the nuclear program?
He said, ‘We’ll make a horrible example of you if you test. Okay?’ That was around August 1976. The French did cancel the reprocessing plant agreement, but the uranium enrichment continued.
At that stage there was this Islamic bomb article and they started spreading [rumors] that Libya had funded it. I believe that story was being spread by Zia [Pakistan's military dictator General Zia-ul Haq] and his intelligence because my brothers had set up Al-Zulfiqar and they were launching an armed struggle for the overthrow of Zia’s regime. Zia was very scared of them. His plane had been attacked, his key minister Zahoor Elahi had been killed. So he was very scared of what they would do and they were the first people, like the Tamil Tigers, who were prepared to face death but bow down before him.
I was launching a peaceful movement and a democratic movement and I had studied in America and had a lot of influential friends. To discredit us he wanted to say that these people had connections with Libya and that’s where the money came from. But it had nothing to do with Libya.
I can say 100 percent it had nothing to do with Libya because, although I cannot say who helped and aided us in our technological advancements, again for reasons of state, I know who did and it was not Libya.
You came back to Pakistan in 1986. Then?
I was under house arrest or Karachi prison, Sukkur prison, Sihala police station, house arrest in different places from 1977 to 1984. I went abroad for medical treatment of my ear, I came back in ‘86. I was briefly rearrested.
I first came back in 1985 for Shah Nawaz’s [Benazir's younger brother Shah Nawaz Bhutto who died in mysterious circumstances in France] funeral. I was arrested, but I was released to go and attend his magisterial investigation.
Then I came back in ‘86, then I was again arrested, and I became prime minister in ‘88.
Did you keep in touch with all nuclear events in the intervening years?
No, I didn’t. After my father died, I lost all contact. Those people didn’t know me. Munir didn’t know me, he knew my father. In 1988 when I became prime minister I became aware that AQ Khan and Munir didn’t get on… AQ disliked Munir and found it very difficult to work with Munir. He was junior to Munir.
But when I became prime minister there was a bunch of scientists who had come to see me. Of course, when I became prime minister they tried to keep me out of the nuclear loop, even though the most important issue was the nuclear issue and there was a sense of paranoia that our nuclear laboratories could be attacked by Indian planes, or Israeli planes.
Israel had attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor, so there was a lot of concern that our nuclear program would be forced to roll back and that they could be destroyed totally. I had to deal with this and when I became prime minister it was one of the first issues I had to deal with.
It was an issue raised by the United States, it was an issue that every Western ambassador raised with me — fears of nuclear proliferation.
I did not know it then, but now I know that since 1987 Zia had offered to help Iran with a nuclear reactor. This has come in the press, that he had offered this to or decided on a military strategic command.
What is now known is that after defeating the Soviet Union, Zia wanted to defeat America. Everyone in Pakistan used to say, ’Amrika nay ek kutta pala, Zia-ul Haq uska nala.’ They used to say this and what people don’t realize is that in Pakistan at the mass level Zia was so abused that it was all for the nuclear program, this was because he was an American dog. They used to call him ‘Amrika ka kutta’, they never called him by his actual name.
He tried to tell everybody that he was not doing it for America, but for Islam and after defeating the Soviet Union he was going to defeat America and make Islam the greatest power in the world.
So somewhere after 1987, according to press reports, he offered this to Iran…
When you became PM, did the military keep you out of the enrichment plant at Kahuta?
I don’t remember, I really don’t remember. I think I may have been to PAEC, but I don’t remember if I went to Kahuta. I would really have to check the records to see if I went or not. They tried to keep me out of the nuclear program.
By bypassing you with papers?
Right, but I put myself in it in December [1988] because this was the biggest issue. I asked the army chief and he said, ‘It’s got nothing to do with me, it’s the president.’ I asked Ishaq Khan [then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan] and he said, ‘There’s no need for you [to know].’
I thought, I’m the prime minister and there’s a war going on, a political war, where the president is trying to say the army comes under him, security comes under him, the nuclear program comes under him. But my party would say no, we have a parliamentary system and parliament is the elected body and security issues must come before the parliament and the prime minister is head of the parliament, so she must be involved in security discussions. Otherwise she becomes a glorified municipal mayor, which is what Ishaq and the military had Nawaz Sharif [then opposition leader and later prime minister] saying.
So did you have no contact with the nuclear establishment?
I picked up the phone and called Munir, whom I knew very well, and I picked up my phone and he said who else knows, Qadeer Khan. They both turned up to see me. So then the president and military establishment decided they had to deal with me, they could not bypass the prime minister. Because, while they might say they had no power over the military, I could sack the scientists and then what would they do?
Or I could take the press into confidence, I could take parliament into confidence. So then, because I asserted myself, the president called me up within hours of my calling the scientists and telling them I want a briefing, where we stand, where are we?
What did the president say?
He said, ‘Come, we’ll have a meeting together.’ So then we decided to set up a command committee. Originally, the program was under the prime minister who was the chief executive. When Zia took over as president, he kept himself as the head of it because under Zia the chief executive was the president. So it went to the president and army chief.
When I became prime minister, they tried to keep it with the president and army chief, but later they inducted me and it became the president, the prime minister, and the army chief. We would meet at the presidency and, when we wanted briefings on anything, we would call the scientists.
So in 1988 uranium enrichment was running at 93 percent, which is weapons grade level?
Enrichment was at 93, but we had done a cold test by… well, we decided about the proliferation and we decided it was important first to achieve a certain level. So they did a cold test around January ‘89.
So that was without the nuclear core?
I don’t know how cold tests are done. But they said before I gave any guarantees to the West, I must have a cold test to see if everything works.
Between January and March the cold tests were done. I don’t know if they did it in January or they did it several times, or what they did. But it was completed by March.
Because I told them how many bombs do we need to destroy civilization? I said who will be left to destroy civilization? Okay, we need some in case one gets wiped out and another gets wiped out, some degenerate and something else happens. I said, ‘You tell me how many you need.’
And what did they say?
I don’t want to get into that, there are certain things that I feel I must keep quiet about. So I said whatever you need, you keep that much. But beyond that we don’t need. So we figured we had enough, we didn’t need and we would give the statement that for confidence-building, to protect our laboratories we would not export.
I could not understand why the Americans were insisting on exports, that there should be no exports. But they and IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] — and there were meetings in Vienna with my adviser for defence, he was also part of the enlarged committee.
So by 1989 Pakistan had an operational nuclear capability?
Yes.
A stockpile existed by then?
Not only a stockpile but bomb components existed and it was only a question that we put them together or did not put them together. So not putting together the bomb components meant a time lag, which the West said gave it confidence that nothing would be done impetuously.
But there must have been huge political pressure from the West at that time.
As I said, the sense of paranoia that our sites would be blasted out, our laboratories. Everyone was concerned, even the military was concerned. The army was concerned, the president was concerned, the Pressler amendment was there.
Soviets were withdrawing by February and there was concern that as soon as the Soviets withdrew we would no longer be a frontline state in the fight against Communism. And that is when our nuclear installations could come under attack.
So we had a very narrow time frame during which we could actually negotiate to satisfy international concerns.
I didn’t want to keep it secret. There was the question of how do you continue secretly? So I thought that rather than have a secret or covert program if we had achieved our security needs, we could have an open policy of what we had intended to do. So we had non-intrusive verification because the Americans claimed their satellites could pick up the volume at which the enrichment plant or the gas centrifuges worked.
So they could pick up whether we were doing 93 percent or not. And at the time we were negotiating what I remember is going from 93 percent to 60 percent. Not going to 5 percent, which is non-weapons grade.
So there was a kind of cutback in a way, a self-imposed restraint?
Yes.
In that first period of your prime ministership?
Yes.
So what were these non-intrusive inspections?
That the satellites could pick up the speed at which the enrichment plant was working so with those revolutions — because at 60 percent you beat at a certain level and at 90 percent you beat at another level.
Were you surprised by the nature of the non-intrusive inspections? It must have come as a shock.
I don’t know, this is what I was told, you do so many things in government that the way you retain your memory is to retain what are the important things. I don’t remember who told me, but I was told the Americans would be able to monitor what we were doing.
So at that stage in 1989 you gave them the reassurance that you will not put the components together?
Yes.
And you imposed the voluntary self-restraint of cutting back to 60 percent [enrichment]?
Yes.
So the amount, the volume of highly enriched uranium decreased?
Yes, so then if you want to make more weapons you have to take that 60 and go to 90. So you always have the option. What we said was that so long as our security is not threatened, we will not put the device together.
So we kept open the option of putting our device together in the event of what we perceived as a security threat, which to our minds meant that if India detonated a device we would have the option of putting it together and, if there was a war, and we felt it was necessary for our deterrence, we would be putting it together.
So we did not rule out putting it together.
Did you think this was realpolitik or a moral position you were taking?
It was realpolitik and also a moral position which we also had long discussions on. There was also the argument made that why should we give [in to] America, we should try and see what we can do to disperse our capacity. We do have the uranium one. But I thought that was too messy and that would involve a whole secret network of trying to set up alternative laboratories because these were known. Also trying to shift the materials. I didn’t like that. I argued how many times do we need to destroy each other and at the end of the day they agreed with me.
In return for our restraint the Americans agreed to suspend the Pressler Amendment and give us the aid.
Did they do that?
Yes, $4.6 billion was the quid pro quo, whereas under Zia we got less, we got $4.2 billion for fighting the Soviets. But the Soviets were gone and we got $4.6 billion and, instead of getting 20 or 40 F-16s that we got under Zia, we got 60 F-16s. They weren’t delivered because my government got overthrown in 1990 and the Americans alleged that we had crossed the line and that we had gone back to 90 per cent uranium enrichment.
What about AQ Khan?
AQ Khan and Munir didn’t get on, but after overthrowing me I believe it was in 1990 that they separated them and made it the Khan Laboratories.
I believe AQ has a huge ego.
But he didn’t have a huge ego then. The huge ego only started from 1990. When I knew him he was a modest man. I first came across him in 1988 when he came to see me with Munir. They seemed like government servants ready to carry out government orders. The prime minister had called them, they came. 
In one of his articles published in Hurmat, Qadir talks about the Partition deaths he witnessed at Bhopal railway station.
He never mentioned that to me. He offered his services to my father, that was that.
He talks about how he was mistreated when he crossed the border from India to Pakistan, mistreated by Indian forces.
I only know that from 1990, around 1990-93, the two institutions of the PAEC and Kahuta Laboratories were separated. They were called Kahuta Laboratories, but their name was changed to AQ Khan Laboratories at some stage.
Not under my government, but it was changed. After my election there was an attempt to woo him and since my father had made the nuclear device, there was also a need to have a symbol.
I think it was after Nawaz Sharif detonated the nuclear devices that AQ became ‘Father of the Nuclear Bomb.’ But actually everything was done before.
Khan never said anything to you like ‘Prime Minister, we must teach these wicked Hindus a lesson’?
Never. He was quiet, only spoke when questioned. He would come to me obviously with recommendations. By the time we had finished with the nuclear — because we had this agreement — all that was left with nuclear was miniaturization and preservation. And then I had established the missile technology board.
I can tell you that in 1989 we established the missile technology board and he [Khan] saw me in that connection, he had discussions with me in connection with missile development technology.
How did he move into missiles from bombs?
That he would have to answer, but he saw me about it and Beg [then army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg, above left] saw me about it and I looked into the subject and I saw we were able to develop missiles that were short of MTCR [Missile Technology Control Regime]. So I agreed to develop Pakistan’s [missile force]. We were worried because we were dependent on the F-16s for delivery, we didn’t know that the plane could be shot down before it crossed or what would happen. So we needed missile technology. India had developed its own missile technology. I developed missile technology in 1989 and I made certain important decisions with regard to it.
In 1993 when I went to [North] Korea it was to get their technology to compare it with our technology. But we had already developed when I was prime minister from 1989 in time for 1997. I was going to missile-test the Zulfiqar, which after my overthrow was called the Ghauri and which I thought was real mean pettiness. The world calls it the Nodong, but it was not the Nodong.
Your second term as prime minister in 1993?
1993 autumn to 1996. I took over when Pakistan was bankrupt, it was on the brink of being declared a terrorist state, the first attacks on the World Trade Center had already taken place. The Americans had cut off all aid because of proliferation concerns.
Where was the enrichment program then? Had it returned to 90 percent?
When I took over they said it had gone down to 5 per cent… so obviously somewhere along the time during Nawaz’s term — we were bankrupt, the [1993] World Trade Center attack had taken place and we were on the brink of being declared a terrorist state — so perhaps in a bid to cool international tempers, they agreed to go to 5 percent uranium enrichment.
Later you hauled Pakistan out of a crisis?
Yes, the nuclear crisis in the first term and the terrorism crisis in my second term.
Did you initiate the revival of the nuclear program in your second term?
No, I didn’t. I called them and asked, ‘What line did we cross?’ Nobody could find what line had been crossed. I thought it unacceptable as prime minister that we should lose the $4.6 billion package and lose all the F-16s and be isolated because of intelligence by the US. We never got the 4.6, it was all cut. We got whatever was the first tranche and the rest was all cut.
There had been a quid pro quo and money had been released from ‘89 till 1990. But in the summer of 1990 [US] Ambassador [Robert] Oakley came to see me and he said they had picked up some intelligence reports that we are crossing the line. He didn’t define it. I took it to mean that we are back to making weapons grade uranium. Because in my mind, for whatever reason, it stuck that they used to verify through the revolutions of the centrifuge.
I told Oakley I would look into it, but he said, ‘Not yet, I’m just mentioning it to you and I will come back to you.’ The following month he came back to me and said, ‘Yes, I’m making this officially.’ He was sharing this with me. So then I informed Beg about it and I informed Ishaq [President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, above right] and said I want a meeting of the Nuclear Board where I planned to tell them about it and call the scientists to find out what was behind it.
Ishaq told me, ‘You are going abroad on a tour, we’ll have a meeting when you come back.’ I was going on a tour of some Muslim countries in connection with a meeting of some Islamic nations. There was to be a resolution on Kashmir, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the Kashmiri people had risen up, and we thought this was a good moment to press for their political freedom.
The OIC [Organization of Islamic Conference] had never passed a resolution on Kashmir, so I traveled to a sea of Muslim countries between June and July 1990. When I was abroad in July the US sent a special envoy who I understand was Bob Gates [then deputy national security adviser to President George H W Bush] — but this will have to be verified — he was coordinating with the foreign office.
First of all, they should never have let him come when I was going abroad because I was going abroad for six months, or three months, but they called him and then they said ’she’s traveling’. Then they would tell me ‘he’s coming to see you in Bahrain’, or ‘he’s coming to see you in Egypt’, or whatever country I happened to be in. But he would never come, or if he would come the meeting would never take place.
I felt I was a victim of a conspiracy. They were doing something, I don’t know what they were doing, but they did not want me to call a meeting of that board. They would not want me to call a meeting of the scientists because I would find out. So what I think they did was sabotage that meeting and after having sabotaged that meeting, the meeting never took place.
I went back to Pakistan, I told Ishaq, he set a date for the meeting at the end of July and one day before he cancelled it and said it would be in August. On August 6 my government was dismissed.
What happened next?
When I got back into government, I was curious and wanted to know what [had] happened. They said there was no explanation. Because of the lack of a satisfactory explanation, I said this would not do and asked what they proposed. It was then agreed [that] we would put security inside the laboratories, that we can monitor the scientists and ensure the scientists do what they are ordered.
As far as you were concerned, were the laboratories still enriching at a non-weapons grade 5 percent?
No, it was 60 percent when I left office. But when I came back to office they had committed to 5 percent. First of all, we had security outside the laboratories, right? Now we have security inside the laboratories from 1993 under a major general. So now there is no way a scientist can do anything independently without being monitored.
Your concern was that someone was crossing the line and you didn’t want that to happen?
Yes, they had to follow government policy. To prevent anybody violating government policy — one of the explanations given was that maybe some of the cores had degenerated, and to replenish the cores the scientists had started enriching.
I said that was unsatisfactory because if the core degenerated then they must bring it to the attention of the prime minister and the board and then start, take our permission to redoing it to 95 percent. But to do it on their own was not right.
Between 1993 and 1996 you did not authorize the revival of 95 percent enrichment?
No, no. They had given a commitment of 5 percent and they kept it at that. Although our commitment was at 60 percent. Because they had brought it to 5 percent, we kept it for confidence because we always felt that the way to safeguard the program was through international confidence and that if the world was frightened of a Muslim bomb… in the case of India, India was not going to export it to another country because India wanted it for itself. There was no Hindu civilization of pan-Islamic view.
In the case of Israel they were not going to give it because there was only one Israel. But in the case of Pakistan there was always a fear that it is going to turn into a replicating bomb that will be used in a series of countries. So there was a much greater fear about our bomb, or perhaps there was a greater fear about Muslims because half the problems are in the Muslim world.
I don’t know what was the fear in the world community, or maybe it was because of Israel. I can’t say, but I can say there was a great deal of insecurity. At the same time, having nuclear status was a matter of security for Pakistanis and, sadly, though it was a weapon of mass destruction, it was a matter of pride because people felt we were as good as India. India had developed one, we had developed one. If their scientists are good, our scientists are equally good.
So the bomb reassured the national psyche?
In that sense it covered two aspects of the Pakistan national psyche and for a country that had been disintegrated and had gone through the horrors of partition and considered Kashmir under occupation, this was a saving grace, that we can compete equally with India.
Is it possible that rogue elements assisted by the Pakistan military and jihadis started playing around with the nuclear program from 1990 onwards?
It is possible, but not probable, for certain reasons. In 1989 I learned from one of the journalists who was tied to the elements trying to overthrow my government that those elements were basically the intelligence, the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] people and MI [Military Intelligence]. They were trying to overthrow my government, but these people had some journalists very close to them.
One of them planned to take AQ Khan to a Muslim country and keep him there. They told him they would take him on a pilgrimage — it’s not Saudi Arabia — they would go for a pilgrimage and keep him there. I saw this as an attempt to embarrass me by suggesting that Benazir Bhutto is anti-Pakistan and she’s a security threat and she’s responsible for the disappearance of our nuclear scientist. So I passed orders that no scientist could leave the country without government permission. And security guards.
That means such scientists could never leave the country without the government’s explicit knowledge?
There was one other thing I may have inadvertently done [and that] was introduce them to the international black market. At that time my parliamentarians would come to me in Parliament House and say they had been approached by Russian scientists wanting to sell enriched uranium, this was in ‘89-90. There were Soviet scientists who were starving, they weren’t given their salaries, they were poor, they wanted to meet me and I didn’t want to meet them.
They approached the government, parliamentarians, so here they come and tell me, ‘We don’t have to worry if we can’t make uranium, we can buy uranium. Okay?’ I thought it was a trap set up by the intelligence. So I then sent them to the ISI to investigate. Unfortunately, if it was not a trap, I introduced the ISI to the network. I sent the information to the ISI and I never got a report back. I assumed it was a trap because I never got a report back. I remember this incident because it didn’t happen just once. The first time I said ‘no, no’ and thought it would die. But it was persistent and when it was persistent I sent it to the ISI to investigate.
Is this the time Khan started going to Libya and Iran?
Probably not Libya. I don’t know, we need a full investigation to see whether the president changed the policy or the army chief defied the intelligence, or the intelligence defied the army chief, or whether elements of the intelligence bought over by Al Qaeda joined up with the scientists. We don’t really know, all this is possible. So barring an investigation, my suspicion is that Iran happened between 1990 to 1993.
Where does Libya fit in?
Libya comes much later when I was overthrown a second time. Either they offered it to them then or maybe they offered it in my first term, I don’t know. But in February 2000 Musharraf went to Libya. In July 2000 Musharraf’s commerce minister and friend took out a full page ad offering nuclear related products for sale. The AQ Khan brochure was also made then. What happened was that in 1998 we detonated the nuclear device. I was expecting to be called by Nawaz Sharif and I was expecting to be asked for my advice on how to deal with the situation. I thought it was time for Pakistan to take the moral high ground by opening its laboratories and doing a cold test in front of everybody to say, ‘See, we are a nuclear power’, but not doing a hot test. But nobody asked for my views.
Did the uranium for the 1998 tests come from the ’80’s, or was it the result of a rogue operation?
Not rogue. My information says that the material came from the time which we had collected it upto ‘89. We were not aware of any rogue operations. We know they crossed the line, we know there was an explanation given that there was certain degeneration; we know that there were certain security measures put in so in future the government would be asked rather than this be done on their own.
In 1998 we detonated six nuclear devices and we obviously had to go back — under Nawaz Sharif, I assume — to uranium enrichment to make up for what we had detonated. Because six is quite a lot.
We had a lot of shortage of funds. It was after my dismissal in ‘98 that there was a financial crunch. It is then that they might have thought they could earn money by selling. So I suspect Libya and North Korea took place post-’98. Iran they have tracked down to 1987. What I have read is that it went on in 1987 under Zia, but actually the cooperation started after my dismissal in 1990 and ended in ‘93 or ‘94 after I became PM.
When I went to North Korea, A Q Khan told me we can get their [missile] technology [so] that we can compare to our own. So I took [it] up with Kim Il Sung. I had given commitment not to export. Neither commitment was asked not to import and no commitment was given we would not import.
December ‘93 I talked to him [Kim], he agreed and some time in 1994 — and it was cash, they needed money and so it was done for cash. It was paid in installments of computer discs.
What did North Korea give you?
They gave us the missile technology, whatever they had developed, in return for cash. We paid them in installments because we also had foreign exchange to keep in mind for other things because we were buying tanks and planes and all sorts of things.
What about the rogue nuclear issue?
What rogue issue? The world has accepted it was the rogue issue, but I suspect it was Musharraf because the time lag I am looking at, both Libya and North Korea were squarely under Musharraf’s watch as chief of army staff and chief executive of Pakistan and it is Musharraf who goes to Libya in 2000.
North Korea is also in that 1999 onwards period?
It has to be after because when I was there, we had the technology and they wanted to develop it because we had the money. But by the time I am dismissed the country’s economy goes into a tailspin, we no longer have money. So if they need something, they need to pay for it, so what do they do?
What about Khan and Iran?
This is what we have to see through an investigation whether Mr Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Mr Nawaz Sharif have changed the policy after my dismissal.
Do you think Khan was given a villa on the Caspian Sea and caviar rights?
I think Khan got a pittance of the money. He couldn’t even leave the country without somebody on his left hand and right hand watching everything he did and to accept that Khan ran an international operation, that Israeli businessmen were involved and Indian businessmen were involved, that parts were coming from South Africa and Malaysia without anyone knowing, is unbelievable.
Khan was asked to fall on the sword in the name of national interest, which means cover up for Musharraf.
Maybe there were people who came. This is what I want an investigation on. Because if this is government policy that changed, I got bizarre recommendations which I used to veto. So if I got bizarre recommendations, Musharraf would have got them and it was his job to veto. If he did not veto, there should be accountability.
You have been quoted as saying you are the mother of the bomb.
No, I am the mother of the missile technology. My father was the father of the nuclear thing. They said, you know, that they are against Benazir because of corruption, but Qadeer Khan can keep the hundreds of millions he made through corruption and he’s still a hero because he helped with the nuclear and the missile programs. My father is the father of the nuclear program, I am the mother of the missile program, and I don’t even admit I’m guilty, I say I’m innocent, and they are not willing to forgive me. He says he is guilty and they are willing to forgive him. So it’s not me they oppose, it is the policies I espouse that they oppose. They want to crush the democratic movement in Pakistan because they have a different agenda.
Did you ever think India would use nuclear weapons against Pakistan?
Well, we thought our nuclear deterrent would prevent India from doing a war against us, we didn’t think they would use it because they are militarily superior. So [it is] the party which is militarily inferior that has first use. The way the war scenario was picked up it was that Pakistan could sustain a war for two or three weeks, until we built the Multan pipeline, but after that we had greater fuel capacity, but we still lacked essential items and the embargo via the sea route would hurt.
Unless we had another route through Afghanistan or Iran, it would make it very difficult for us to continue fighting a war beyond a limited period of time, as we saw in ‘65 and ‘71. Ultimately, the Indians had greater military resources than we did, they are five times larger than we are, and they can fight for five times longer than we can.
So we would need the world community to intervene, but if they failed to intervene the only way to stop an Indian advance was to threaten a retaliation.
Which Indian city would Pakistan have launched against?
I don’t know if we would have launched it, we did have capability to launch from several places. With missile technology you have capability to launch from several sites…
I mean, where in India would you have targeted?
I don’t know, they would have targeted a city and we would have targeted a city if it came to war.
Looking back, what other thoughts do you have about the nuclear program?
Basically, if Libya and North Korea happened under Musharraf’s watch, then it is a nightmare scenario in the West. Because then it turns out [that] their key ally has been going out with what is called the ‘Axis of Evil.’
I find the West is unprepared to accept that Musharraf did this, they are prepared to accept that Qadeer Khan did it, either to save Musharraf the embarrassment, or prepare for Musharraf to cover up for his colleagues.
What they want to know is the infrastructure, the people involved, and the network. They will follow it through and one will lead to another… Musharraf, however, is not stupid, he’s cunning.
He’s using the March offensive against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas and peace moves with India as diversionary tactics to take the heat off him on the nuclear issue.
He is a maverick and he will behave if he feels there will be pressure on him. It was my view that the country needed internal unity and everyone should have been brought on board to tackle this issue and there should have been a debate on how we should handle it to get out of it.
Obviously, what has happened is a matter of great concern and of huge repercussions. It’s naive to believe it can all be swept under the carpet. This is the best time to deal with it when the world needs us. If we fail to deal with it now, then when the can of worms opens later, Pakistan could face a great deal of difficulty. Musharraf is a military dictator who needs to explain why he visited Libya, why his commerce minister took out this advertisement in The News in 2000.
Copyright © 2002-04 South Asia Tribune Publications, L.L.C.
http://www.satribune.com/archives/mar14_20_04/P1_bb.htm
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