Posted on 01/31/2007 9:29:37 PM PST by CarrotAndStick
Pakistan has said that it would not hand over disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan for questioning to Washington despite an American bill, which could force Pakistan to surrender him and hoped that the Bush administration would intervene to make the final legislation more balanced.
Speaking to media persons at a weekly briefing, Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasneem Aslam said US queries should be forwarded to the government, which would investigate and respond.
The proposed law called the Nuclear Black Market Counter Terrorism Act, recently passed by the US House of Representatives, requires the President to submit a report identifying any country or person connected with transactions with the nuclear proliferation network that supplied Libya, Iran, North Korea within 90 days of its enactment.
Another provision of the proposed law, which if enacted, could force Pakistan to hand over Khan, says the President will send to Congressional committees a description of the extent a country is cooperating with the US to stop proliferation, including the degree to which the it has satisfied requests for information and grant of access to key persons involved in proliferation.
Emphasising that Pakistan was a 'nuclear state,' Aslam said, "The Senate is yet to come up with its own version. The two versions will be discussed in the conference stage."
Khan is currently held under house arrest in Islamabad after he confessed of proliferating nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
The bill was adopted along with another which required President Bush to certify that Pakistan was doing all it could to counter the Taliban and Al-Qaeda before financial aid was released.
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This mean Congress is authorizing troops to enforce this law?
says the President will send to Congressional committees a description of the extent a country is cooperating with the US to stop proliferation, including the degree to which the it has satisfied requests for information and grant of access to key persons involved in proliferation.
Is that a request?
Iran is the problem in the M.E., and Pakistan is the problem in Central Asia.
We can't fight everybody, though.
A Q Kahn is a thief of nuclear secrets and a shamelessly greedy and dangerous nuclear proliferator, but he's a hero to the Pakistanis and they won't be turning him over to a bunch of infidels to whom he might spill his guts about islamic nuclear intentions all around the world.
But it may be impossible to have him brought to justice here. It is essential that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal be kept out of the hands of the extremists, and extraditing Khan could cause that to happen. So we need to find a way to kill Khan and make it look like an accident or natural causes.
At times like this.....assassination seems like a sane world's response to insane behavior...
Destroying evil should be a supported endeavor.
Semper Fi
If we had a real CIA there would be no Khan.
If there was a real CIA,They would see that AQK is just a scapegoat...Points to ponder over-
1.How could a single civilian achieve the kind of prominence in a highly shielded & monitored sector in a state which has been ruled by the military for over 25 of the last 40 years???
2.What was the military doing when Khan was "proliferating" from facilities run by them??In a country with an excellent secret service.
3.How coming were Pakistani C-130s landed up in North Korea in 2001 bartering nukes for missiles-long after Mushy the redeemer came to power??
Pakistan remains, as it has ever been, our enemy. They invented the Taliban, are hiding Bin Laden, and are engineering the "Islamic bomb" to spread throughout the world. Treating Musharraf as an ally was a big mistake.
Fact of the matter is, he was doing the bidding of Pakistan's senior leadership, to further what was then the national interests of Pakistan. While all that may have changed now, they're not simply going to hand over a national hero simply because Pakistan joined our team.
BINGO! WE HAVE A WINNER!
What was then in Pakistan's interests is still in it's interests because proliferation is in the interests of the P.R.C,Pakistan's oldest & only all weather ally.
Agreed, Musharrif is no friend of ours.
Nor would there be a Hugito Chavez. I prefer the good old days when the CIA did its damn job and no one knew what they were doing. Now they are so second-guessed by those idiots in Congress that nothing gets done. There is no reason for Khan's continued existence. We should have gone and got him years ago.
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