PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf has rightly described Pakistan’s nuclear programme father Dr. Abdul Qadeer Kahn as a national hero. His remarks made during his recent trip to New Zealand regarding the role Dr. Khan played in giving the country the nuclear-power status in fact reflect the sentiments of the entire nation. We all know that a team of committed scientists and engineers, headed by Dr. Khan, secretly toiled for years to help acquire nuclear capability despite sanctions from the West. Dr. Khan and his men ran around across the world as part of their covert operations to obtain at times at great risk to their life critical spares to develop the centrifuge technology used in producing the atom bomb. The device successfully tested on May 28, 1998 at Chaghi in the remotest corner of Balochistan catapulted Pakistan into the prestigious nuclear club which today comprises only seven states including all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and India. Thanks to the untiring efforts of Dr. Qadeer Khan, Pakistan is proud to be the only Muslim nuclear power. Why should we hide the facts. Pakistan’s Dr. Qadeer acquired nuclear weapons’ production capability mostly through the underworld.
In the process Dr. Qadeer and few of his associates may have erred. However, their objective was to give a shield against the known designs of our enemies to destroy our sovereign identity. Dr. Qadeer has indeed saved Pakistan from extinction. While the Quaid-e-Azam is the creator of Pakistan, Dr. Qadeer will go down in the annals of our national history as country’s saviour. No nation could survive if it fails to recognize and honour its heroes. The treatment meted out to Dr. Qadeer may not appear to be fair but the fact remains that charges of his alleged involvement, if any, in the supply of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, have been strongly refuted by the concerned Governments and there is no credible evidence available as yet to establish his links with the so-called nuclear black market.
In the neighbouring India, the father of that country’s missile programme, Dr. Abdul Kalam, has been adequately honoured. Their hero is now the elected President of India, the largest democracy in the world. Over one billion Indians regard Dr. Abdul Kalam as their hero. Any self-respecting nation should do the same as the people of India. Dr. Qadeer, our national hero, however is under house arrest. He had recently been hospitalized and angiography procedure had to be done at the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology at Rawalpindi. The newspaper reports say that he has been shifted back to his residence and he is improving. We all pray for his speedy recovery. While we offer no comments on the role, if any, Dr. Qadeer had had in nuclear proliferation, the people of Pakistan shall ever remain beholden to him for his services to the nation. We as a nation should stop mentioning about of his alleged links with the nuclear black market. It was perhaps through the underworld and nuclear black market of the West that Dr. Qadeer gave us the “Islamic Bomb”. We are now talking with our arch rival about peace in the region because of our nuclear status. Pakistan stands committed to non-proliferation but what we have achieved through Dr. Qadeer and his men is nothing less than a miracle for a resource-starved, developing country. Long live Pakistan, Long live Quaid-e-Azam, Long live Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.

End of EU dream?

THE spectacular failure of the European Union’s Brussels summit should come as a wake-up call to all advocates of a united and stable Europe. What initially looked like minor, harmless differences of opinion on the EU budget and rebate for UK metamorphosed into a huge political storm that threatens the very future of the elite economic club if not its existence? If as anticipated, Britain was cornered by France and Germany at the Brussels summit on the question of rebate for the country, countries like Italy and the Netherlands squabbled over their share of contribution to the economic bloc. The bitter war of words between Britain and France while highlighting the dangerous schism between the traditional rivals and neighbours shocked the new, poor entrants to the club who offered to cut their own EU income to resolve the budget issue.
While Germany happens to be the biggest contributor to EU (7.7 per cent) and may be justified in asking Britain to reconsider its rebate, France’s opposition to UK rebate is intriguing. The French contribution to the EU budget is lower (2 per cent) than UK’s share of 2.8 per cent. The Brussels summit was expected to not only finalise the EU budget for the period of 2007-13 but also take on the serious question marks hanging over the EU constitution. The meeting, however, failed to address either of the two crucial issues. The union has effectively decided to put the imponderables threatening the EU unity on the proverbial backburner. However, that cannot drive away the demons haunting the world’s largest economic and political bloc. Of course, the club will continue to function normally for now and there’s no immediate threat to the euro will continue as common European currency.
The immediate yet invisible fallout would be the erosion of EU standing as a world player that has sought to counter-balance America’s role in a unipolar world in post Soviet Union years. In the Middle East, in particular, EU played a positive and harmonising role by backing the Palestinians in response to US support for Israel. The EU continues to be the biggest donor of aid to the oppressed people in Occupied Territories. The double blow of constitution rejection and failed budget deal are sure to make the EU dangerously uncertain of itself. It cannot take any new, proactive initiatives for peace, dialogue and political-economic cooperation between nations and cultures. The question of new members like Turkey joining the club is now more uncertain than ever. We hope the EU leaders will prove our apprehensions wrong. The EU must survive these setbacks and rise to meet the challenges facing its future. For the failure of EU, which has inspired similar experiments of regional and political cooperation world wide, would be a blow to the ideal of a world sans borders and narrow divisions.

plz pray,
Sardarzada

__________________
God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife....

New York, 18 April (AKI/DAWN) - The case involving Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan could be reopened following claims by Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Tehran was "presently conducting research on the P-2 centrifuge, boasting that it would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers". A report in the New York Times on Monday said: "Last year, Pakistan said its investigation into the Khan network was closed. But the Iranian crisis has led to renewed questioning of Dr. Khan, American intelligence officials and European diplomats say."

Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, admitted in February 2004 that he had trafficked nuclear secrets and parts to other countries, including Iran, Libya and North Korea. He was pardoned by Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf on the condition that he would cooperate with the authorities.

The Pakistani government confirmed in 2005 that Khan had supplied nuclear parts to Iran. However the nuclear scientist has not been allowed any visitors and international investigators into global nuclear proliferation have not been allowed to question him.

The New York Times report on Monday said: “The new claim focuses renewed attention on Iran’s rocky relationship with Mr Khan, who provided it with much of the enrichment technology it is exploiting today. If Mr Ahmadinejad’s claim is correct, it probably indicates that relationship went on longer and far deeper than previously acknowledged. Mr Khan and his nuclear black market supplied Iran with blueprints for both the more elementary machine, known as P-1, and the more advanced P-2.”

There were other indications that Khan might have been dealing with Iran as recently as six years ago, the newspaper said, noting that Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf disclosed recently that he fired Dr. Khan in 2001 after discovering that he was trying to arrange a secret flight to the Iranian city of Zahedan, known as a centre of smuggling.

Khan refused to discuss the flight, saying it was important and very secret. “I said: ‘What the hell do you mean? You want to keep a secret from me?’” Musharraf recalled in an interview with The New York Times for a Discovery Times television documentary, Nuclear Jihad.

“So these are the things which led me to very concrete suspicions,” Musharraf said, “and we removed him.”

Officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say solving the mystery of the P-2 shipments has become one of the most critical issues on which they need answers in the next two weeks, before IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei issues a report to the United Nations Security Council on April 28, the Times said.

Other pressing questions include Iran’s reluctance to discuss a document found by inspectors — one that the Iranians were not willing to let the inspectors take out of the country — that sketches out how to shape uranium into perfect spheres, the tell-tale shape for a primitive weapon.

Investigators say that the document, too, appears to have come from the Khan network.

It is also unclear whether Khan sold the Iranians a complete Chinese-made bomb design similar to the one Libya turned over to the United States when it gave up its weapons programme.

Questions about other copies of the bomb design have been met with silence, in Iran and in Pakistan, the newspaper said.

“Frankly, I don’t know whether he has passed these bomb designs to others,” Musharraf said in the interview with Discovery Times channel. Even under a loose form of house arrest for the past two years, he said, Khan “sometimes has been hiding the facts”.

European diplomats said a delegation of Iranian officials is due to arrive on Tuesday in Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency will press them to address the new enrichment claim, as well as other questions about Iran’s programme, including designs for a crude bomb found in the country.

plz pray,
Sardarzada

__________________
God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife....