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| Pak wants to be forgiven for nuke proliferation | | |
WASHINGTON: Having ‘retired’ its disgraced nuclear expert A.Q.Khan to the doghouse to escape American inquiries, Pakistan has sent its premier nuclear strategist to Washington to bat against charges of reckless nuclear proliferation to Washington’s arch enemies and plead for parity with India in the field of nuclear energy cooperation.
Lt-Gen Khalid Kidwai, head of Pakistan’s Strategic and Planning Division, is in Washington DC these days, trying to overcome the stigma of nuclear proliferation with slick presentations about Pakistan’s ''secure and foolproof command and control system'' amid continuing fears in the west about jiihadi takeover in Islamabad.
While doing so, Kidwai, using a combination of bluster and implied threat, is also pressing for a nuclear deal similar to the one US has signed with India.
Kidwai is slated to meet key US officials and Washington’s non-proliferation community this week to make Pakistan’s case and implore that they should let bygones be bygones.
Meanwhile, a Senior Pakistani official made a special presentation on Monday to a few select western and Pakistani correspondents outlining the current status of the country’s nuclear program and insisting that it was now fully secure.
In course of a 110-page powerpoint presentation made at the Pakistan Embassy on a Eid holiday, the official is reported to have argued that Washington’s ''one-sided nuclear deal (with India) could prove counterproductive for US strategic objectives'' in South Asia if Pakistan was not offered a similar deal.
In what one journalist who was present described as an unusually detailed presentation, the official, who is among Islamabad’s more articulate spokesmen and respected in strategic circles, reportedly acknowledged that Pakistan had been damaged by Khan’s proliferation but now looked forward to ''life beyond that episode.''
However, for ''reasons of national sensitivity,'' he maintained, Khan could not be made available for direct questioning, although there has been a rising clamour in western strategic circles for access to the nuclear smuggler following North Korea’s nuclear test.
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