ISLAMABAD, Nov 17: Pakistan on Wednesday denied an Iranian opposition claim that its top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had transferred highly enriched uranium to Tehran in 2001.
"This is a highly exaggerated account. Somebody has let his imagination run wild," a senior government official told AFP, commenting on the statement in Vienna by an Iranian opposition group, National Council for Resistance in Iran.
The group's senior official, Farid Soleimani, claimed at a news conference that Dr Khan "delivered a quantity of HEU to Iran in 2001." The Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Islamabad had shared the findings of its investigation into the international black market of nuclear proliferation with the international community.
"The government of Pakistan had shared findings of some illicit transfers by international black marketers transparently with the people of Pakistan," the official said.
"It has also been cooperating with the IAEA." Pakistan has refused to let the UN atomic agency directly interview Dr Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's bomb, after his public confession in February to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
President Pervez Musharraf gave Dr Khan a conditional pardon and said no government or military body was involved in the proliferation scandal. Earlier in Vienna, a dissident Iranian group claimed that Iran had obtained weapons-grade uranium and a design for a nuclear bomb from Pakistan scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.
"(Abdul Qadeer) Khan gave Iran a quantity of HEU (highly enriched uranium) in 2001, so they already have some," Farid Soleiman, a senior spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), told reporters.
"I would doubt it was given enough for a weapon," he added. Soleiman asserted that Khan allegedly also gave Iran a Chinese-developed warhead design sometime between 1994 and 1996. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that Dr Khan's network gave Libya the bomb design. -Reuters
