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Khan Recants Nuclear Confession
Former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has recanted his 4-year-old public admission to running an international nuclear smuggling network without the knowledge of Pakistani leaders, the London Guardian reported today (see GSN, May 29). The public confession, however, “was not of my own free will,” he told the Guardian recently, while taking a hard line toward cooperating with investigators trying to learn about the smuggling network. “Why should I talk to them?” he said of International Atomic Energy Agency officials. “I am under no obligation. We are not a signatory to the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty]. I have not violated international laws." Details of the black market ring were "my internal affair and my country's affair,” he added. Khan dismissed the notion of Pakistani nuclear technology having ever been smuggled as “Western rubbish,” blaming other nations’ acquisition of uranium enrichment technology on Western suppliers. “They were supplying to us, they were supplying to them ... [to] anyone who could pay," he said. Khan said reports that he had an extravagant lifestyle funded by nuclear smuggling were fictions dreamed up by Western media. “It doesn't bother me at all. They don't like our God, they don't like our prophet, they don't like our holy book, the Koran. So how could they like me?" he said (Declan Walsh, London Guardian, May 30).
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