A scientist who built Pakistan's nuclear bomb may have helped North Korea, Iraq and Iran. The national hero denies he's 'a madman.'
UNITED NATIONS — If one man sits at the nuclear fulcrum of the three countries President Bush calls the "axis of evil," it may well be Abdul Qadeer Khan.
The 66-year-old metallurgist is considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. He is a national hero at home, where hospitals bear his name and children sing his praises. U.S. and other Western officials do not. They say Khan is the only scientist known to be linked to the alleged efforts of North Korea, Iraq and Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
"If the international community had a proliferation most-wanted list, A. Q. Khan would be most wanted on the list," said Robert J. Einhorn, who was assistant secretary of State for nonproliferation in the Clinton administration. It began when India tested a nuclear device in 1974 and Pakistan immediately sought to catch up. Khan kick-started the country's nuclear program the following year, allegedly providing copied plans for gas centrifuges from the Urenco uranium enrichment facility in the Netherlands, where he had worked. He also obtained a list of suppliers that would prove invaluable. Khan ultimately was tried for treason in absentia in the Netherlands, but the case was dropped when prosecutors failed to properly deliver a summons.
"He stole the blueprints," said David Kay, who headed nuclear weapons evaluation programs at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna from 1982 to 1992. "But he's not a cat burglar who snatched some plans. He's a very good scientist."