Abdul Qadeer Khan
Dr.
Abdul Qadeer Khan (b. 1935) is a Pakistani Metallurgical Engineer widely regarded as the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons development programme. (His middle name is also, occasionally, rendered as Quadeer, Qadir or Gadeer and his given names are often abbreviated to A.Q.). In January 2004, he confessed to having been involved in a clandestine international network of nuclear weapons technology proliferation from Pakistan to Libya, Iran and North Korea. On February 5, 2004, the President of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, announced that he had pardoned Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.
In an August 23, 2005 interview with Kyodo News General Pervez Musharraf confirmed that Dr. A.Q. Khan had supplied gas centrifuges and gas centrifuge parts to North Korea and, possibly, an amount of uranium hexafluoride gas.
Early Career
Abdul Qadeer Khan was born in 1935 into a middle-class Muslim family in Bhopal, India, which migrated to Pakistan in 1952 following the country's separation from India five years earlier. He qualified as an engineer at the University of Karachi, Pakistan, before moving, and after graduation went to West Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium for further studies, earning a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1972.
That same year, he joined the staff of the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory, or FDO, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. FDO was a subcontractor for URENCO, the uranium enrichment facility at Almelo in the Netherlands, which had been established in 1970 by the United Kingdom, West Germany, and the Netherlands to assure a supply of enriched uranium for European nuclear reactors. The URENCO facility used Zippe-type centrifuge technology to separate the fissionable isotope uranium-235 out of uranium hexaflouride gas by spinning a mixture of the two isotopes at up to 100,000 revolutions a minute. The technical details of the centrifuge systems are regulated as secret information by export controls because they could be used for the purposes of nuclear proliferation.
In May 1974, India tested its first nuclear bomb (Smiling Buddha), to the great alarm of the government of Pakistan. Around this time, Dr. A.Q. Khan had privileged access to the most secret areas of the URENCO facility as well as to documentation on the gas centrifuge technology. A subsequent investigation by the Dutch authorities found that he had passed highly-classified material to a network of Pakistani intelligence agents, although, they found no evidence that he was sent to the Netherlands as a spy, nor were they able to determine whether he approached his government about espionage first or whether they had approached him. He left the Netherlands suddenly in January 1976 and was put in charge of Pakistan's nuclear weapons development programme with the support of then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The former Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers, revealed in early August 2005 that the Netherlands knew of Dr. A.Q. Khan stealing nuclear secrets but let him go on two occasions after the CIA expressed their wish to continue monitoring his
movements.
Development of nuclear weapons
Dr. A.Q. Khan established the Engineering Research Laboratories at Kahuta, Rawalpindi, in Pakistan in July 1976, subsequently, renamed as the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), as it became the focal point for developing a uranium enrichment capability for Pakistan's nuclear weapons development programme. KRL also took on many other weapons development projects, including the development of the nuclear weapons-capable Ghauri ballistic missile. KRL occupied a unique role in Pakistani industry, reporting directly to the Pakistani Prime Minister's office, and having extremely close relations with the Pakistani military. The former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, has said that, during her term of office, even she was not allowed to visit the facility.
Pakistan, very rapidly, established its own uranium enrichment capability and was, reportedly, able to produce highly-enriched uranium by
1986.This progress was so rapid that international suspicion was raised as to whether it had had outside assistance. It was reported that Chinese technicians had been at the facility in the early 1980s, but suspicions soon fell on Dr. A.Q. Khan's activities at URENCO. In 1983, he was sentenced in absentia to four years in prison by an Amsterdam court for attempted espionage, although the sentence was later overturned on appeal on a legal technicality. Dr. A.Q. Khan rejected any suggestion that Pakistan had illicitly acquired nuclear expertise: "All the research work [at Kahuta] was the result of our innovation and struggle," he told a group of Pakistani librarians in 1990. "We did not receive any technical know-how from abroad, but we cannot reject the use of books, magazines, and research papers in this
connection.
In 1987, a British newspaper reported that Dr. A.Q. Khan had openly confirmed Pakistan's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. It was after western agencies realized the scale of the developmet that all formal aid to Pakistan was suspended in the early 1990s. It was quoted as confirming that the U.S. intelligence report "about our possessing the [nuclear] bomb is correct and so is speculation of some foreign newspapers" and criticised Pakistan's detractors, who had "told the U.S. that Pakistan could never produce the [nuclear] bomb and they now know we have done
it. Dr. A.Q. Khan's statement was, subsequently, disavowed by the Government of Pakistan and Dr. A.Q. Khan, himself, initially, denied giving it, although, he, later, retracted his denial. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported in October 1991 that Dr. A.Q. Khan repeated his claim at a dinner meeting of businessmen and industrialists in Karachi, which "sent a wave of jubilation" through the
audience.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Western governments became increasingly convinced that covert nuclear and ballistic missile collaboration was taking place between China, Pakistan, and North Korea. According to the Washington Post, "U.S. intelligence operatives secretly rifled Dr.
A.Q. luggage ... during an overseas trip in the early 1980's to find the first concrete evidence of Chinese collaboration with Pakistan's [nuclear] bomb effort: a drawing of a crude, but highly-reliable, Hiroshima-sized [nuclear] weapon that must have come directly from Beijing, according to U.S. officials." The activities of the Khan Research Laboratories led to the United States terminating economic and military aid to Pakistan in October 1990, following which, the Pakistani Government agreed to a freeze in the nuclear weapons development programme. According to the Federation of American Scientists, this came into force in 1991. However, Dr. A.Q. Khan, later, claimed in a July 1996 interview with the weekly Friday Times that "at no stage was the programme (of producing nuclear weapons-grade enriched uranium) ever
stopped".
The American clampdown may have prompted an increasing reliance on Chinese and North Korean nuclear and missile expertise. In 1995, the U.S. learned that the Khan Research Laboratories had bought 5,000 specialized magnets from a Chinese Government-owned company, for use in the Uranium enrichment equipment. More worryingly, it was reported that Pakistani nuclear weapons technology was being exported to other states aspirant of nuclear weapons, notably, North Korea. In May 1998, Newsweek magazine published an article alleging that Dr. A.Q. Khan had offered to sell nuclear know-how to Iraq, an allegation that he denied. United Nations arms inspectors apparently discovered documents discussing Khan's purported offer in Iraq, which Iraqi officials claimed were legitimate but that they had not agreed to work with Khan, fearing it was a sting
operation. A few weeks later, both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests (Pokhran-II and Chagai-I, respectively) that, finally, confirmed both countries' development of nuclear weapons. The event was greeted with jubilation in both countries and Dr. A.Q. Khan was feted as a national hero. The President of Pakistan, Muhammad Rafiq Tarar, awarded a gold medal to him for his role in masterminding the Pakistani nuclear weapons development programme. The United States, immediately, imposed sanctions on both India and Pakistan and, publicly, blamed China for assisting the Pakistanis.
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