Musharraf Scorns Nuclear Probe

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Sunday defended his decision not to allow international investigators to interrogate Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist accused of peddling nuclear secrets around the world.

Appearing on CNN’s “Late Edition” on Sunday, Musharraf said the requests from United Nations nuclear inspectors indicated a lack of trust in Pakistan, portraying the issue as a matter of national pride.

President Bush met with Musharraf on Saturday and urged the Pakistani military man to ensure that all information about the Khan network’s nuclear proliferation be turned over to the Americans. Musharraf promised to do so.

But the White House did not ask for direct access to Khan -- apparently in deference to Pakistani sensitivities about a man who, as the father of the country’s atomic bomb, had been considered a hero.

However, the International Atomic Energy Agency still wants to interview Khan, whom Musharraf has pardoned, and Khan’s assistant, who is held in Malaysia.

Lacking such cooperation, officials view it as unlikely that Khan’s activities will ever be fully unraveled, The Times reported Sunday.

Musharraf told CNN that Pakistan could do the best job interrogating Khan.

“It shows a lack of trust in us,” Musharraf said. “We can question him the best, and then there is ... a domestic sensitivity. This man is a hero for the Pakistanis, and there is a sensitivity that maybe the world wants to intervene in our nuclear program, which nobody wants.... It is a pride of the nation.”

Analysts have raised doubts about whether Musharraf is keeping Khan from speaking to international investigators for fear the scientist might reveal the extent to which some of his activities may have been condoned by the Pakistani military.

Musharraf denied “200%” that the Pakistani government or military knew that Khan was making nuclear weapons information available to other nations.

The Pakistani leader, a key Bush administration ally in its war on terrorism, also said that, in hindsight, the U.S. decision to invade Iraq was a mistake.

“We have landed ourselves in more trouble,” he said.

There was no new information on where Osama bin Laden could be, Musharraf said, but he suggested that Al Qaeda’s command structure in Pakistan has been broken by recent military operations aimed at rousting militants from tribal areas along the Afghan border.

In Pakistan, both pro-government and opposition parties staged large street demonstrations coinciding with Musharraf’s foreign tour.

In the central city of Multan, a coalition of six Islamic parties, Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, held a rally and vowed to force Musharraf to quit as army chief if he reneged on his promise to do so voluntarily by year’s end, according to Reuters.

Loosening the military’s control over politics has been a key goal of the Pakistani democracy movement, but the parliament recently passed a law that would allow Musharraf to keep the top army job as well as the presidency.