Pak rejects report linking A Q Khan with N Korea’s N-programme

Pakistan govt has 'devised and continues to implement a foolproof safety and security regime for nuclear-related materials'.

Pakistan described as “baseless” a media report about disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khans links with North Koreas clandestine atomic programme.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said the “assertions and insinuations” made in the report by the Washington Post as baseless.

“At no point in time were there any authorized transfers of nuclear-related materials,” he said in a statement.

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Basit said the “so-called A Q Khan proliferation network was effectively dismantled and all relevant information” shared with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and concerned states.

The Pakistan government has “devised and continues to implement a foolproof safety and security regime for nuclear-related materials,” he said.

“In short,A Q Khan is a closed chapter. There is no point over dramatising A Q Khan-related stories which are more fiction than facts,” Basit added.

The Post had reported,citing an account by the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb programme,that North Korea may have been enriching uranium on a small scale by 2002,with maybe 3,000 or even more centrifuges and Pakistani supplied vital machinery,drawings and technical advice.

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Khan continues to be under surveillance by Pakistani security agencies though a court had declared him a “free man”.

He was put under house arrest in early 2004 after he confessed to proliferating nuclear technology on state-run television. The current Pakistan Peoples Party-led government eased some of the restrictions on him last year.