- ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Abdul
Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, is being questioned about
reports of possible links between the Pakistani and Iranian nuclear programs,
the Pakistani government said Monday.
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- The move follows investigations by the U.N.'s nuclear
agency. Tehran has acknowledged using centrifuge designs that appear identical
to ones used in Islamabad's nuclear weapons program.
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- Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told Reuters Khan
was being questioned in connection with the "debriefings" taking
place of several scientists working at his Khan Research Laboratories,
a uranium enrichment plant near Islamabad.
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- "He is too eminent a scientist to undergo a normal
debriefing session," Masood Khan said. "However, some questions
have been raised with him in relation to the ongoing debriefing sessions."
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- The spokesman denied reports that Khan was "under
restriction" and gave no other details.
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- Several intelligence sources told Reuters however the
scientist, who is a national hero for developing a nuclear bomb tested
in 1998 to rival India's, had not been allowed to receive visitors at his
home in Islamabad nor to leave it since last week.
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- One intelligence official said the U.S. Federal Bureau
of Investigation had taken part in the questioning.
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- "It is a routine matter," said one of the sources,
who did not want to be identified. "We are debriefing every nuclear
scientist, so Dr Qadeer is facing the same formality."
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- Diplomats in Vienna told Reuters last month the U.N.'s
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was investigating whether blueprints
for Iran's centrifuge had come from someone in Pakistan or elsewhere.
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- Tehran, accused by Washington of trying to develop nuclear
weapons, told the IAEA it had got them from a "middleman" whose
identity the agency had not determined, a Western diplomat told Reuters
at the time.
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- KEY U.S. ALLY
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- Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the "war on terror,"
denies exporting nuclear technology and specifically denies any link to
Iran's nuclear program.
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- Sunday, authorities said Yasin Chohan, one of three Khan
Laboratories scientists detained earlier in the month, had been allowed
home after a "personnel dependability and debriefing session."
It said two others, Mohammad Farooq, and another identified only as Saeed,
were "still undergoing debriefing."
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- Opposition politicians have condemned the investigations
as a "national insult" and a capitulation to American pressure.
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- It was inevitable the spotlight of the Iran probe would
turn to Khan, who worked in the 1970s at a uranium enrichment plant run
by British-Dutch-German consortium Urenco.
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- According to diplomats close to the Vienna-based IAEA,
the centrifuge designs used by Iran were of a machine made by the plant
in the Netherlands.
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- In 1983, after his return to Pakistan, Khan was sentenced
in absentia to four years' jail by an Amsterdam court for attempted espionage,
a decision later overturned on appeal.
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- Earlier this year, Washington announced commercial sanctions
on Khan Research Laboratories for allegedly arranging the transfer of nuclear-capable
missiles from North Korea to Pakistan, a decision Islamabad protested.
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