ISLAMABAD, Dec 20: Pakistan has strongly rejected the report published in The Times of London on Friday alleging that a Pakistani scientist had offered Iraq nuclear weapons designs in 1990.
Reacting to the report foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar said on Friday that the latest allegation was a part of the ongoing “campaign of inspired leaks based on pure fiction following on the baseless allegations regarding Pakistan’s cooperation with North Korea.” He indicated Pakistan’s intention to take up the matter in the UN Security Council when it takes up its seat in January.
Pakistan would call for an investigation to reveal the sources of “such mischievous allegations” and their true motivation, Mr Khokhar stated.
“To put the record straight, Pakistan may also ask for full access to the Iraqi documents,” he said.
Terming the Times of London report as “completely false, irresponsible and motivated, he pointed out that the report was a re-hash of a story that had appeared in the Newsweek in 1998.
Referring to the Newsweek article he said the matter had been thoroughly investigated then on the request of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the allegation was found to be entirely false.
The IAEA, Mr Khokhar recounted, had subsequently written to the author of the story John Barry, stating unequivocally that his story was “inconsistent with the information available to the IAEA.”
The IAEA is responsible for Iraqi nuclear disarmament and possesses all relevant information about its nuclear programme.
Without naming India Mr Khokhar said: “It is obvious that these leaks were selectively targeting Pakistan while ignoring the well-documented proliferation activities of the largest proliferator of weapons of mass destruction in our region which possessed not only an ambitious nuclear programme but also chemical and biological programmes.”
The foreign secretary warned that such reports could also be designed to provide alibis to the actual suppliers of technologies and financial credits to the Iraqi programme, pointing to the fact that the recent Iraqi declarations submitted to the UN Security Council had only been provided in their entirety to the permanent members of the Council. “Many of the actual truth may therefore never come out,” he concluded.