A day with A.Q. Khan

My suspicion about America grew after I interviewed Khan in January 1987. In the course of that interview he blurted out that Pakistan had the bomb. He said: ‘‘America knows it. What the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct and so is the speculation of some foreign newspapers. They told us Pakistan could never produce the bomb and they doubted my capabilities. But they know we have it.’’ But then why had Pakistan not announced it, I asked. Khan replied: ‘‘Is it necessary? America has threatened to cut off all its aid.’’

Until the story appeared five weeks later, I did not know that an annual aid bill of Pakistan was to come up before the US Congress within a few days. Islamabad attacked me for having deliberately delayed the story to synchronise its publication with the Congress hearings. This was not true. I was trying to sell the story to the London Observer, which wanted to know every bit of information before publishing it. Since Observer is a weekly paper, the messages back and forth took time. It wanted to be sure of all facts. It was proved right because Khan did take the paper to the British Press Council on the plea that there was no interview.

The council’s pronouncement was: ‘‘It is agreed by the parties that a meeting and conversation took place between the complainant, Dr A.Q. Khan, and the writer of the article, Mr Kuldip Nayar. Dr Khan strongly denies quotations attributed to him and the interview reported in the article. On the evidence before it, however, the Press Council has not been satisfied that the interview did not take place or that the quotations were untrue. The complaint against the Observer is, therefore, not upheld.’’

The first person to call me was Senator John Glenn from America. He wanted to make sure that Khan had actually mentioned Pakistan possessing the bomb. He said he would take up the matter because the Pakistan aid bill was pending before Congress. It was a long telephone conversation and he seemed convinced that Pakistan had the bomb.

The Committee on Government Affairs, United States Senate, wrote to me on August 17, 1987, seeking my comments on the interview. Randy J. Rydell, who sent a letter on behalf of the committee, said that Khan’s comments in the interview tallied with his remarks in Dawn a year earlier. I told Rydell that I was not aware of Khan’s article in Dawn. In my letter I explained: ‘‘When I put questions on technical matters to Dr Khan, he said that he had already answered them in the form of an article in The Muslim. He would be wasting his time as well as mine in answering them once again and advised me to look up (his comments in) The Muslim and use them as his replies.’’

Some American newspapers also called me to check the authenticity of the story. I thought I had convinced them. Obviously, I had not. The American president certified that Pakistan did not have the bomb. Strange, he was never questioned on that point even though he had reports from his intelligence agencies to confirm that Pakistan had the bomb.

What struck me about Khan when I met him along with Mushahid Hussain, then editor of The Muslim, was his conviction that his country would remain ‘‘invincible’’. He told me in no uncertain terms that Pakistan would use the bomb if India ever drove it to the wall, as it had during the Bangladesh war. His nationalistic instinct, in fact, made him spill the beans. During the interview there came a stage when I was not getting anywhere. He would not answer a straight question: did Pakistan have the bomb or not? But he nearly hit the roof when I said that according to H. Sethna (the father of India’s bomb) Pakistan had neither men nor material to make the bomb. Sethna never told me this but I made it up to provoke Khan. An egoist cannot contain himself. He banged his hand on the table and said at the top of his voice: ‘‘Tell them we have it, we have it.’’

Mushahid’s face fell when Khan made the claim. Since he had arranged the interview, he could visualise the repercussions. Poor Mushahid lost his job and some religious parties levelled the charge of treason against him. General Zia-ul Haq, then the martial law administrator, saved the situation but Mushahid was literally hauled over the coals.

America has now woken up after confirmation that Khan sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran. The ire against him is misplaced because he could not have passed on information without the consent of Islamabad’s rulers — Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Zia-ul Haq, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf.

‘‘It has all the hallmarks of the Pakistani system,’’ a senior official in Washington has said. ‘‘These guys are now there as suppliers to the biggest proliferation problems we have.’’ But of what use is this outcry? America did not do anything to intervene when Khan was working feverishly to develop the bomb. And, as he said proudly, he did it in seven years, compared to India’s twelve.