LAHORE, Feb 6: The Lahore High Court Bar Association has called for allowing Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to visit the bar and take the lawyers into confidence about the government agenda on the country's nuclear programme.

Dr Qadeer has accepted the bar's invitation to address the community, but the government is learnt to be restricting his movement, LHCBA President Hafiz Abdur Rahman Ansari told a news conference here on Friday.

Flanked by vice-president M M Alam Chaudhry and a candidate for the bar president, Ahmad Awais, Mr Ansari told reporters that the government, under a calculated move, was maligning nuclear scientists.

"We have no doubts in our mind that the regime is advancing a foreign agenda in bringing into disrepute the scientists, who are heroes in the eyes of the people and who worked diligently in making Pakistan appear on the global nuclear scene," he added.

According to Mr Ansari, the way Dr Qadeer was humiliated by making him a scapegoat to cover up misdeeds of many others, spoke volumes of the government intentions against the country's nuclear programme, which was not only a deterrence for Pakistan but also a potential defence instrument for the entire Muslim world.

PLF: The People's Lawyers Forum has condemned what it calls the illegal way of pardoning principal nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to signal the wrapping of the whole proliferation episode in a rather ugly manner.

Speaking at a news conference here on Friday, PLF President Ghulam Rasool and other leaders, including Mian Jahangir, Naseem Kashmiri and Amir Hashmi, demanded that the whole issue should be probed by a national commission comprising the Supreme Court judges so that the people should come to know the factual position about the programme.

"The way the government staged the drama of securing a plea for clemency from Dr Qadeer and the spontaneity with which he was pardoned in a day shows how desperate it was to wriggle out of a situation that had caused an embarrassment for all the people of Pakistan," he said.

Mr Rasool said the government made Dr Qadeer a scapegoat to cover up the wrongdoings of several generals since 1979, who were equally responsible for nuclear proliferation. He said no nuclear scientist could be expected to smuggle extremely sensitive technology or its hardware without the expressed approval or at least the connivance of the country's establishment, which alone stood guard to this national programme.

Even political parties and civilian government were kept at length from the programme and no prime minister ever dared to seek information about it, he added.

The PLF president said the episode of extending pardon to Dr Qadeer was an illegal act because the president had the power to pardon a person after a long process of criminal and judicial acts, which started from the commission of the offence to be followed by the registration of an FIR, trial and conviction.

He said no stage had been reached for clemency and subsequent pardon. "The haste with which the entire process has been completed shows that it was not Dr Qadeer, but the government which wanted the whole episode to be completed within no time."

Meanwhile, the Ghulam Rasool-Mian Jahangir faction of the PLF announced that it would support Khwaja Saeeduz Zafar for the office of the president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association in the elections scheduled to be held on Feb 28.