VIENNA (Reuters) - Afghanistan urged the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Wednesday to tackle what it called the Pakistani government’s apparent knowledge of a Pakistani-led ring responsible for the illicit spread of atom bomb know-how.
Western-backed Afghanistan is bidding for a seat on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors. Kabul is competing with Syria, an ally of Iran. A decision by the IAEA’s 145-nation assembly is expected on Friday.
Pakistani authorities have denied any part in the A.Q. Khan smuggling network that provided nuclear weaponization blueprints to Iran, North Korea and Libya before it was broken up in 2004.
Khan, a nuclear scientist lionized by countrymen as the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb, made a televised confession in 2004 to selling nuclear secrets to the three countries.
He was put under house arrest in Islamabad, where he remains, after Pakistan was confronted with evidence by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Three months ago he was quoted in a media report as saying Pakistan’s army, spy agency and then-President Pervez Musharraf knew about a past, covert centrifuge sale to North Korea.
KHAN’S CHARGES
The chief of Pakistan’s strategic planning division, which oversees its nuclear arsenal, said Khan’s charges were “categorically wrong and false.”
Khan backed off and pointed to passages in a Musharraf autobiography saying Pakistani police searched a North Korea-bound plane but found nothing because Khan’s associates had been tipped off and never loaded suspect cargo.
“It is regrettable that Khan’s confession clearly indicates the willingness of his own government to participate in such acts,” said Wahid Monawar, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the IAEA.
“We call upon the agency to avail its agenda and discuss this matter with serious consideration,” he told the annual meeting of the IAEA’s General Conference (assembly) in Vienna.
“We cannot sit and watch while such international treaties are violated in a dangerous and irresponsible matter.”
Pakistan has never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty or permitted IAEA inspectors to interview Khan to help resolve Western intelligence allegations of secret atomic bomb research by Iran, which has denied any such activity.
Monawar told Reuters Kabul was concerned that Afghan Taliban insurgents known to have sanctuaries in border areas of Pakistan “one day might grab off one of those (nuclear) weapons, and the ramifications of that will be grave – how could one explain that? This is a concern of the world.”
Musharraf pardoned Khan and Islamabad has said it considers its investigation of him to be closed.
But IAEA investigators and U.S. officials fear Khan’s secrets may have spread wider than North Korea, Iran and Libya because much of the sensitive information was in electronic form and therefore easily transmitted via the Internet.
bloody afgan traitors.. sold to indian billion dollars aid!! meri bili mujhy miyaoon’!!???
so after saving 10+ million afgani lives gave them shelters food etc and we get this for helping them?
