ISLAMABAD, Jan 30: Pakistan Army spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan on Friday said the New York Times report suggesting that investigators in the ongoing nuclear inquiry were "glossing over the evidence that senior military officials might have approved the sales", was mischievous.
In reply to a report "Nuclear Inquiry Skips Pakistani Army" that appeared in the New York Times on Jan 30, Mr Sultan said two Brigadiers of the Pakistan Army who remained associated with the KRL security were being questioned, and if evidence was found against any other official, he too would be investigated.
The US newspaper report says: "None of the accounts prove that the Army, or Pakistan's government, approved the transfer of nuclear technology." But quoting American and Pakistani analysts, the report says the evidence that could prove that the military approved the transfer, would be the discovery of Pakistani nuclear hardware in Libya, North Korea or Iran.
"They said it was nearly impossible for hardware to leave Pakistan's tightly guarded nuclear facilities, and the country, without at least the tacit approval of the Pakistani Army," the report says.
The report adds that anonymous government andintelligence officials have disclosed to the New York Times "details of a deepening inquiry into what seems to have been the transfer of Pakistan's nuclear technology to Iran and other countries in the late 1980's and early 1990's".
It also says: "One issue rarely addressed by officials of the military-led government is the extent to which the inquiry has examined the role Pakistan's powerful military, which had tight control over the nuclear programme, may have played in the sale or sharing of nuclear technology."
"The recent reports of Pakistan's sharing of nuclear technology with North Korea are also being given short shrift." George Perkovich, a proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington, said General Musharraf was trying to appease American demands for an investigation while not angering the Army, his base of support.
"The problem for Musharraf is that people in the Army would know about this," Mr Perkovich said in a telephone interview. "And he wants to protect his club."
One focus of suspicion is Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, the commander of the Pakistani Army from 1988 to 1991, American analysts said. Robert B. Oakley, who served as the American ambassador in Islamabad from 1988 to 1991, said in a telephone interview that Gen Beg told him in the spring of 1991 that he was discussing nuclear and conventional military cooperation with the Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
FOREIGN OFFICE: Meanwhile, a foreign office spokesman told APP that the ongoing investigation of scientists and former military personnel was comprehensive and addressing all aspects without any discrimination.
"The ongoing investigations of individuals are vigorous and comprehensive, which are addressing all aspects," Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said and rejected the news reports suggesting double standards in the investigations.
"All possible leads are being checked," Mr Khan said. "Double standards have, however, been demonstrated by not quizzing international intermediaries and black marketeers linked to other countries."
The spokesman said this was a much wider problem beyond Pakistan because sources of an underworld and a black market were being tracked to European intermediaries and manufacturers.
The spokesman reiterated that "the government of Pakistan has never proliferated and will never proliferate. This includes all past governments." "There is no evidence that any government or military personality was involved. No government institution or entity, civilian or military, has ever sanctioned or authorized anybody to proliferate," Mr Khan said.
He said: "No sensitive information or technology was shared with North Korea by any government of Pakistan, in the past or present." The extent of Pakistan's interaction, he said, was limited to the purchase of conventional short-range surface-to-air missiles, which is public knowledge.
"The insinuation in the news report is fallacious," he said. The thrust of these investigations, Masood Khan said, is to establish if some individuals had violated Pakistani laws.