ISLAMABAD, April 28: National Engineering and Scientific Commission (Nescom) Chairman Dr Samar Mubarakmand on Saturday said it was the late Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) chairman Munir Ahmed Khan who had selected the site for Pakistani nuclear tests in mountains of Chaghi, Balochistan, and designed tunnels there a decade before nuclear blasts were conducted on May 28, 1998.

He said the late chairman of the PAEC maintained a low profile throughout his life. His discreetness made him little known not only to the outside world but also to those government officials who bestow medals on national heroes.

He was paying tributes to the services of late Munir Ahmed Khan - who remained the PAEC chairman for 19 long years (1971-91) - on the occasion of his eighth anniversary at a memorial reference at the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) here.

Dr Samar said it was Mr Munir Khan who developed indigenous nuclear fuel and groomed a team of indigenous nuclear scientists. It was he who chose Kahuta as a place for the Pakistani nuclear installations. The Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP) owes its existence to him and also so many other national agricultural and research bodies.

Dr Samar and a majority of the scientists who spoke on the occasion suggested a posthumous Hilal Imtiaz award for Munir Khan.

The speakers indirectly drew a comparison between Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was being considered as the father of Pakistani nuclear programme and loved self-promotion, whereas Munir Ahmed Khan was a little known scientist to the people of Pakistan.

Those who had worked for years with Mr Khan narrated the stories of a dejected, desponded and hopeless Pakistani nation after the 1971 debacle of East Pakistan and how prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, assigned the mission impossible to Munir Khan of getting the nuclear power within the minimum available time at a meeting in Multan in 1971.

Former PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar - who had worked for four years with Mr Khan - said the late PAEC chairman was deeply perturbed over what he called absence of responsibility and restraint in nuclear matters and also over issues of command and control of weapons of ultimate destruction.

In communications with the then prime minister and also in newspaper articles Munir Khan pleaded, “nuclear weapons are not a plaything to be bandied publicly. They have to be treated with respect and responsibility. While they can destroy the enemy, their use can also invite self destruction”.

Farhatullah Babar said it was a strange coincidence that on his death anniversary today the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London had announced that a new dossier “Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan” will be launched next week dramatising the warnings that Munir Khan has been sounding. “We did not heed his warning then and have ended up in making Pakistan a suspect at the centre of international proliferation,” he said.