Restrictions maybe lifted on founder of Pakistan’s nuclear programme

Restrictions may soon be lifted on the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has been under house arrest since 2004 for transferring nuclear secrets to Iran and Libya.

“I do not want to see his (Qadeer Khan) movements restricted. He is a Pakistani and a respected Pakistani,” said Pakistan’s new Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureishi.

Over the years there has been heavy speculation that Qadeer was made a scapegoat by tge government of Pakistan. “I saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself,” he said.

The late Benazir Bhutto had called Qadeer’s confession a cover-up to save Musharraf. “Khan was asked to fall on the sword in the name of the national interest, which means cover up for Musharraf,” she said in an interview in 2005. She had also revealed that she may have been the one responsible for inadvertently alerting elements within Pakistan of the existence of an international nuclear black market when she rejected offers from impoverished Soviet scientists to buy enriched uranium in 1990.