Pakistan Lifts Restrictions on Nuclear Scientist

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ... A Pakistani court ruled Friday that the father of Pakistan...s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was accused of selling nuclear technology abroad, was no longer under house arrest and was free to move around the country.

• The court that lifted the travel restrictions on Dr. Khan, 73, is a new court of limited legal jurisdiction established under the former president, Pervez Musharraf, and it appeared that the move Friday was as much a political decision by the civilian government as a legal one.
• Dr. Khan, considered in the West as a rogue scientist and a pariah who sold technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, is regarded as a national hero in Pakistan for his role in transforming the country into a nuclear power.
• Speaking to reporters after the court’s decision, Dr. Khan said: “All this happened because of the keen interest taken by the president, the prime minister and especially Rehman Malik, who has looked into the case, reviewed it, discussed it with the government, discussed it with the concerned authorities.” Mr. Malik is the senior official in the Pakistani Interior Ministry.
• The lifting of restrictions served to pacify the powerful conservative lobby in Pakistan who wanted greater freedoms for Dr. Khan, according to Talat Masood, a retired army general. “This has taken away pressure on the government,” Mr. Masood said. “It has brought goodwill on the government because of his popularity.” However, Mr. Masood said he believed that despite Dr. Khan’s new freedom to move around the country the government would prevent him from traveling abroad.
• “The government will go out of its way to assure the international community and the United States in particular that he will devote most of his time to education and do nothing on nuclear matters. That’s very important for the Pakistan’s credibility.”
• If Dr. Khan is allowed to speak of all he knows, or chooses to do so, he could cause considerable embarrassment to Pakistan. In July 2008, he told Pakistani reporters that Pakistan had transported uranium enrichment equipment to North Korea in 2000 with the full knowledge of the country’s army, then headed by Mr. Musharraf.
• “A.Q. Khan’s release is a good symbolic move that is likely to restore faith in the civilian government’s bid to sustain its sovereignty,” said Rafia Zakaria, a columnist for Daily Times, a leading English daily. “Something which is essential if Pakistanis are to believe that the war on terror is not just being fought at America’s behest and is something in their own interest.”
• Dr. Khan’s wife, Henny Khan, said the authorities still held her husband’s passport. She also praised the leaders of the government for the decision. “Rahman Malik has been very helpful,”, she said. “And obviously, it couldn’t happen without the approval of Mr. Zardari.” She was referring to President Asif Ali Zardari who succeeded Mr. Musharraf.
• Dr. Khan was put under indefinite house arrest by Mr. Musharraf after he confessed in 2004 to running an illicit nuclear network over a period of 15 years.
• Mr. Musharraf pardoned Dr. Khan. In the most recent investigations, the Khan network was found to have trafficked in a tested, compact and efficient bomb design that could significantly shorten the time needed to build a weapon and could be delivered by many existing missiles, like Iran’s Shahab-3.
• In interviews to local television networks outside his residence in an upscale Islamabad neighborhood, Dr. Khan, beaming and smiling, said his 2004 confession to involvement in proliferation was a “matter of the past.”
• In a statement late Friday, the Pakistani Foreign Office declined to elaborate on what it called the court declaration making Dr. Khan a “free man.” It said the “so called A.Q. Khan affair is a closed chapter.”
• But there was an unusual amount of secrecy around the court decision.
• A written document from the court, briefly flashed on Pakistani television, said that details of the agreement between Dr Khan and the government could not be disclosed. And Pakistani news reports said implications of the agreement between the government and Dr. Khan that prompted the court ruling were unclear.
• Supporters thronged the Khan residence to congratulate him on the news of his release. A recent book on Dr. Khan, by Douglas Franz and Catherine Collins, said he had done more to destabilize the world’s nuclear balance than anyone else.
• “By the time he was stopped, Khan had done more to destabilize the world’s delicate nuclear balance than anyone in history,” Mr. Franz and Ms. Collins wrote in the book, The Nuclear Jihadist. “For the first time, an individual demonstrated convincingly that the existing international safeguards and mindset were no longer operative, leading to the grim conclusion that any ruthless or unstable regime — or individual, for that matter — with the will and money could acquire the bomb.”
• Pakistani television played pictures all through the day of Dr. Khan, wearing an open necked short-sleeve shirt and slacks, as he waved to supporters outside his house in the capital, Islamabad.
• The decision poses a challenge for the Obama administration. The United States has repeatedly asked Pakistan for permission to interview Dr. Khan about his network of nuclear traders. But Pakistani officials have turned down the requests by the Central Intelligence Agency and international atomic inspectors to directly question him.
• Mr. Masood said one of the reasons it was unlikely Dr. Khan would travel abroad was because of the threat of abduction by people who wanted his information.
• At one point in interviews with Pakistani reporters Friday, Dr Khan thumbed his nose at the international community and at what the reaction would be overseas to his release from house arrest. “Let them talk,” he said in a defiant tone. “Are they happy with our God? Are they happy with our Prophet: Are they happy with our leaders? Never, so why should we bother what they say about us.?” Dr. Khan added: “I would be more worried about what you say about me, not what Bush says or what Dick Cheney says,” he said, addressing the crowd of Pakistani reporters. “I don’t damn care.”
• According to Pakistani press reports, under the court ruling Dr Khan must give 48 hours notice if he wants to leave Islamabad.
• The Zardari government had already eased some of the restrictions placed on Dr. Khan by the house arrest order of the Musharaff era. For example, he was allowed to eat at restaurants, and wrote occasional articles.
• Dr. Khan is a metallurgist, an expert in centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium for bomb fuel, and much of the technology he sold involved enrichment.
• Last month, the United States State Department announced sanctions on 13 individuals, including Dr. Khan, and three private companies that the United States said was involved in the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.
• In its announcement, the State Department specified that Dr. Khan and his associates provided Iran and Libya with centrifuge components, designs, and, in some cases, complete centrifuges. According to the statement, the United States also believed that Dr. Khan and his associates provided centrifuge designs, equipment and technology to North Korea.
• He provided Libya with nuclear weapon designs, the State Department said.
• Assessing the damage that Dr. Khan had brought, the statement said that his network enabled countries to leapfrog the slow, incremental stages of other nuclear weapons development programs.
• The New York Times/ Salman Massoud