(AKI/DAWN) - There’s no evidence to suggest that Pakistan allowed Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear proliferation network to sell nuclear technology to fund its nuclear programme, the lead author of a dossier on the activities of the network told the Pakistani daily Dawn. "We did not assess that Pakistan purposely sold the technology to raise money for its nuclear programme," said Mark Fitzpatrick, who on Tuesday launched in Washington his dossier on Dr A. Q. Khan and the network he allegedly headed.Fitzpatrick, a former US deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, also said that investigators had found no link between the Khan network of nuclear proliferators and the terrorist group that caused the 9/11 attacks on the United States. “We never saw any suggestion that Dr Khan ever met al-Qaeda leaders,” he said. “There’s no link between the Khan network and al-Qaeda.” He said that the Khan network also had no links with Umma Taamir-e-Nao, an NGO whose members allegedly met Osama bin Laden and discussed the production of nuclear weapons with him.
Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, has lived under virtual house arrest in Islamabad since he confessed in early 2004 to leaking sensitive nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. In the report that Fitzpatrick wrote for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, he identified Khan as the head of the group that sold nuclear technology and equipment to Iran, Libya and North Korea but said that “the network’s sales to Libya … were almost exclusively private business transactions, beyond state control.”