Restrictions on Dr AQ Khan likely to ease
Staff Report

ISLAMABAD—Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Monday hinted on lifting of restrictions on the country’s nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has been under detention since January 2004. Khan, founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program, was put under house arrest in 2004 after he confessed on state-run television that he had sold nuclear technology outside Pakistan.
“I do not want to see his (Qadeer Khan) movements restricted. He is a Pakistani and a respected Pakistani,” Qureshi told private Dawn TV channel. “He is a national hero and will not be handed over to IAEA in any situation,” the foreign minister said. The IAEA refers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog. Khan told Pakistan’s Urdu newspaper “Nawa-i-Waqt” in a recent interview that he is under “illegal detention” and hoped that the country’s new government will soon lift restrictions on his movement. On February 5, 2004, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced that he had pardoned Khan.
Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi has revoked that all the restriction on renowned scientist Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan would be revoked after all. While talking to Private TV Channel he said that Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan is a respectable Pakistani and he is our National Hero. He maintained that Dr. Qadir Khan would not be handed over to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at any cost.
Detained Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said that he took the blame four years ago for passing atomic secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya in order to “save his country”. Khan, who has been under effective house arrest since confessing on television in 2004 to running a proliferation network, added that the country’s new government had not yet contacted him about his possible release.
Khan was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf after his confession but has remained under detention. Musharraf denied any state involvement in Khan’s activities but has rejected international requests to quiz the scientist. “I saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself,” Khan told in a telephone interview from his Islamabad villa late Sunday.
Khan is hailed as a hero by many Pakistanis for transforming the country into the Islamic world’s first nuclear power. Pakistan carried out nuclear tests in 1998 in response to detonations by neighbouring India.
\ “Even Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (former prime minister) and Mushahid Hussain (a senator from the party that backs Musharraf) said I saved Pakistan by accepting the whole blame myself,” he added.