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Nuclear black market: Western companies let off: Kasuri

* FM says Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in Pakistan’s custody
* Rejects Indian allegations of cross border infiltration

Daily Times Monitor

LONDON: Pakistan uncovered the involvement of Western companies in the nuclear black market that Dr AQ Khan operated in, but the US and UK have taken no action against them, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri has said.

The US and Britain blacklisted 290 people who helped former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein build his nuclear set up, but they have not been touched, Kasuri said in an interview with the BBC Hard Talk programme.

The minister said Pakistan had not and would not allow any foreign country or agency to interrogate Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the scientist who confessed to selling nuclear secrets to other countries. He said Pakistan had shared information gleaned from Dr Khan with the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said Dr Khan had been pardoned because he had cooperated with Pakistan’s investigation agencies.

Pakistan had dismantled all terrorist training camps and Indian accusations of infiltration into Kashmir were baseless, Kasuri said. The struggle in Indian-held Kashmir was indigenous and there was no infiltration across the Line of Control from Pakistan or Azad Kashmir. “We have dismantled all training camps that were functional earlier and were used during the Afghan jihad against the Soviets,” he said.

Asked how Pakistan could maintain a strategic alliance with the US when the two countries differed on many issues, Kasuri said it was normal for countries to have differences with each other. He said Pakistan and the US had been engaged for over 50 years, with ups and downs. “We opposed the invasion of Iraq. Whatever is against our national interest, we will oppose it,” he said.

The minister said Pakistan had arrested hundreds of terrorists since September 11, 2001, and extradited them to the US, but “this doesn’t mean Pakistan has given its defence into the hands of the US. All the operations in Pakistan have been carried out by Pakistan’s Armed Forces because they have been in the interest of Pakistan.”

Kasuri said that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the Al Qaeda operative arrested in Karachi, had not been handed over to the US and was still in Pakistan’s custody.

He rejected the notion that the London bombers had links with Pakistan. “They were born and raised in the UK ... they were educated in the UK and they have no links with Pakistan. If a persons visits Pakistan for ten or twenty days it is totally wrong that one should declare him an extremist. They got their training in the UK.”

Asked why, if this was true, the government had banned foreign seminary students, he said the London bombings had created an atmosphere in which the president could take this decision. He said only a few seminaries teaching extremism and sectarianism.

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