The world may look on Abdul Qadeer Khan as a rogue scientist who sold Pakistan's nuclear secrets in the international black market. But former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto remains unconvinced.

In the final part of an exclusive interview with rediff.com Senior Editor Shyam Bhatia, Bhutto, who calls herself the mother of Pakistan's missile programme, admits that she had approached the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung for help in missile development. But she also says she had put in some safeguards against nuclear proliferation and whatever Khan is alleged to have done could not have been accomplished without the complicity of General Pervez Musharraf himself. Khan, she says, was probably sacrificed to protect the general, a man she deeply distrusts

Early this year, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's one-time national hero, was exposed as having been involved in the sale of nuclear technology to so-called rogue regimes, sacked from his job as scientific adviser to Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, and eventually pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf.

But former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose father, the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, is acknowledged as the man who first set Pakistan on the nuclear path, refuses to be taken in.

In an exclusive interview with Senior Editor Shyam Bhatia, Bhutto claims that fundamentalist elements colluding with the military regime were actually responsible for trying to export nuclear technology. According to her, Dr Khan is just a scapegoat.

Bhutto, who was prime minister between 1988 and 1990 and again between 1993 and 1996, takes credit for introducing a policy of nuclear restraint that she says was covertly undermined by these jihadi elements.

She also reveals how impoverished Soviet scientists tried to sell enriched uranium to Pakistan in 1990 and how, in the process of rejecting their offer, she may have alerted vested interests in her own country to the existence of an international nuclear black market

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Benazir Bhutto is one of the few people eminently qualified to talk about Pakistan's nuclear programme. Not only was her father, the late prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the moving force behind the project, she herself was closely associated with it through two terms as prime minister.

In the second part of an exclusive interview with Senior Editor Shyam Bhatia, Bhutto discloses that Pakistan not only achieved operational nuclear capability by 1989 but then cut back on its enrichment programme following intense pressure from the West.

Interview:

Can you tell us how Pakistan started its nuclear programme?

Actually, India started developing its nuclear programme in 1961 or '62, maybe even earlier. My father was a minister in 1962 and he tried to get Pakistan to also start a programme from 1962.

The Indians had not detonated anything, but he negotiated and tried to get material from different countries. He was able to get a peaceful nuclear reactor from Canada that was put under Kanupp [Karachi nuclear power plant] inspection. He was also able to talk to other countries -- I don't wish to go into the names of those countries -- but he talked to other countries from 1962 to help Pakistan develop a nuclear programme.

In four years he left Ayub's [military ruler Field Marshal Ayub Khan] Cabinet. That was in 1966. By the time he came back to office in December 1971, this was not his priority because Pakistan had disintegrated and our priority was to first consolidate residual Pakistan so that it would not break.

In those days there was a lot of talk with Manekshaw [Indian army chief General S H F J Manekshaw, later promoted to Field Marshal] saying he would get another present for the Indian people, and the ANP [Awami National Party of Khan Abdul Wali Khan] was getting support from Afghanistan, which was blessed by the Soviet Union, to spur secessionist movements in the Frontier [North-West Frontier Province] and Baluchistan.

So we had a lot of other priorities, the main one of which was to save Pakistan. Therefore my father didn't concentrate on this nuclear thing. I was then at Harvard, I used to come back for the summer vacations.

In 1974, when the Indians detonated the nuclear device, my father announced at a press conference that Pakistan will develop a bomb "even if we have to eat grass."

When did the scientific work start?

In 1974 my father had already got a group of scientists who had been working on the nuclear reactor and I think it was the plutonium process. This was in the context of the PAEC [Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission] which he established. Actually, it wasn't the PAEC, it was still only Kanupp. He established PAEC and he established Kahuta Laboratories.

So there were laboratories established at Kahuta, which were renamed A Q Khan Laboratories much later. I knew of it as Kahuta laboratories by '77, I don't know what it was before.

The main person around it was Munir Ahmed Khan, who became chairman of PAEC, and my father put together the team of scientists for this and he followed two paths to nuclear status. One was the reprocessing plant and he negotiated an agreement with France for a reprocessing plant and then he did a uranium enrichment plant.

How did A Q Khan get involved?

When he learnt that we were to make the nuclear bomb and eat grass if need be, he approached my father and offered his services. He must have flown in, I don't know how he did it. He said, 'I can assist' and later from press reports it was known that he had been working and he had some blueprints. Right? But he offered. Maybe because he was a patriotic Pakistani who, hearing that the prime minister of Pakistan wanted to make [one], gave his own.

Didn't (then US secretary of state) Henry Kissinger threaten Pakistan in those days if it went ahead with the nuclear programme?

He said, 'We'll make a horrible example of you if you test. Okay?' That was around August 1976. The French did cancel the reprocessing plant agreement, but the uranium enrichment continued.

At that stage there was this Islamic bomb article and they started spreading [rumours] that Libya had funded it. I believe that story was being spread by Zia [Pakistan's military dictator General Zia-ul Haq] and his intelligence because my brothers had set up Al-Zulfiqar and they were launching an armed struggle for the overthrow of Zia's regime. Zia was very scared of them. His plane had been attacked, his key minister Zahor Ilahi had been killed. So he was very scared of what they would do and they were the first people, like the Tamil Tigers, who were prepared to face death but bow down before him.

I was launching a peaceful movement and a democratic movement and I had studied in America and had a lot of influential friends. To discredit us he wanted to say that these people had connections with Libya and that's where the money came from. But it had nothing to do with Libya.

I can say 100 percent it had nothing to do with Libya because, although I cannot say who helped and aided us in our technological advancements, again for reasons of state, I know who did and it was not Libya.

You came back to Pakistan in 1986. Then?

I was under house arrest or Karachi prison, Sukkur prison, Sihala police station, house arrest in different places from 1977 to 1984. I went abroad for medical treatment of my ear, I came back in '86. I was briefly rearrested.

I first came back in 1985 for Shah Nawaz's [Benazir's younger brother Shah Nawaz Bhutto who died in mysterious circumstances in France] funeral. I was arrested, but I was released to go and attend his magisterial investigation.

Then I came back in '86, then I was again arrested, and I became prime minister in '88.

Did you keep in touch with all nuclear events in the intervening years?

No, I didn't. After my father died, I lost all contact. Those people didn't know me. Munir didn't know me, he knew my father. In 1988 when I became prime minister I became aware that A Q Khan and Munir didn't get on... AQ disliked Munir and found it very difficult to work with Munir. He was junior to Munir.

But when I became prime minister there was a bunch of scientists who had come to see me. Of course, when I became prime minister they tried to keep me out of the nuclear loop, even though the most important issue was the nuclear issue and there was a sense of paranoia that our nuclear laboratories could be attacked by Indian planes, or Israeli planes.

Israel had attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor, so there was a lot of concern that our nuclear programme would be forced to roll back and that they could be destroyed totally. I had to deal with this and when I became prime minister it was one of the first issues I had to deal with.

It was an issue raised by the United States, it was an issue that every Western ambassador raised with me -- fears of nuclear proliferation.

I did not know it then, but now I know that since 1987 Zia had offered to help Iran with a nuclear reactor. This has come in the press, that he had offered this to or decided on a military strategic command.

What is now known is that after defeating the Soviet Union, Zia wanted to defeat America. Everyone in Pakistan used to say, 'Amrika nay ek kutta pala, Zia-ul Haq uska nala.' They used to say this and what people don't realise is that in Pakistan at the mass level Zia was so abused that it was all for the nuclear programme, this was because he was an American dog. They used to call him 'Amrika ka kutta', they never called him by his actual name.

He tried to tell everybody that he was not doing it for America, but for Islam and after defeating the Soviet Union he was going to defeat America and make Islam the greatest power in the world.

So somewhere after 1987, according to press reports, he offered this to Iran...

When you became PM, did the military keep you out of the enrichment plant at Kahuta?

I don't remember, I really don't remember. I think I may have been to PAEC, but I don't remember if I went to Kahuta. I would really have to check the records to see if I went or not. They tried to keep me out of the nuclear programme.

By bypassing you with papers?

Right, but I put myself in it in December [1988] because this was the biggest issue. I asked the army chief and he said, 'It's got nothing to do with me, it's the president.' I asked Ishaq Khan [then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan] and he said, 'There's no need for you [to know].'

I thought, I'm the prime minister and there's a war going on, a political war, where the president is trying to say the army comes under him, security comes under him, the nuclear programme comes under him. But my party would say no, we have a parliamentary system and parliament is the elected body and security issues must come before the parliament and the prime minister is head of the parliament, so she must be involved in security discussions. Otherwise she becomes a glorified municipal mayor, which is what Ishaq and the military had Nawaz Sharief [then opposition leader and later prime minister] saying.

So did you have no contact with the nuclear establishment?

I picked up the phone and called Munir, whom I knew very well, and I picked up my phone and he said who else knows, Qadeer Khan. They both turned up to see me. So then the president and military establishment decided they had to deal with me, they could not bypass the prime minister. Because, while they might say they had no power over the military, I could sack the scientists and then what would they do?

Or I could take the press into confidence, I could take parliament into confidence. So then, because I asserted myself, the president called me up within hours of my calling the scientists and telling them I want a briefing, where we stand, where are we?

What did the president say?

He said, 'Come, we'll have a meeting together.' So then we decided to set up a command committee. Originally, the programme was under the prime minister who was the chief executive. When Zia took over as president, he kept himself as the head of it because under Zia the chief executive was the president. So it went to the president and army chief.

When I became prime minister, they tried to keep it with the president and army chief, but later they inducted me and it became the president, the prime minister, and the army chief. We would meet at the presidency and, when we wanted briefings on anything, we would call the scientists.

So in 1988 uranium enrichment was running at 93 percent, which is weapons grade level?

Enrichment was at 93, but we had done a cold test by... well, we decided about the proliferation and we decided it was important first to achieve a certain level. So they did a cold test around January '89.

So that was without the nuclear core?

I don't know how cold tests are done. But they said before I gave any guarantees to the West, I must have a cold test to see if everything works.

Between January and March the cold tests were done. I don't know if they did it in January or they did it several times, or what they did. But it was completed by March.

Because I told them how many bombs do we need to destroy civilization? I said who will be left to destroy civilization? Okay, we need some in case one gets wiped out and another gets wiped out, some degenerate and something else happens. I said, 'You tell me how many you need.'

And what did they say?

I don't want to get into that, there are certain things that I feel I must keep quiet about. So I said whatever you need, you keep that much. But beyond that we don't need. So we figured we had enough, we didn't need and we would give the statement that for confidence-building, to protect our laboratories we would not export.

I could not understand why the Americans were insisting on exports, that there should be no exports. But they and IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] -- and there were meetings in Vienna with my adviser for defence, he was also part of the enlarged committee.

So by 1989 Pakistan had an operational nuclear capability?

Yes.

A stockpile existed by then?

Not only a stockpile but bomb components existed and it was only a question that we put them together or did not put them together. So not putting together the bomb components meant a time lag, which the West said gave it confidence that nothing would be done impetuously.

But there must have been huge political pressure from the West at that time.

As I said, the sense of paranoia that our sites would be blasted out, our laboratories. Everyone was concerned, even the military was concerned. The army was concerned, the president was concerned, the Pressler amendment was there. Soviets were withdrawing by February and there was concern that as soon as the Soviets withdrew we would no longer be a frontline state in the fight against Communism. And that is when our nuclear installations could come under attack.

So we had a very narrow time frame during which we could actually negotiate to satisfy international concerns.

I didn't want to keep it secret. There was the question of how do you continue secretly? So I thought that rather than have a secret or covert programme if we had achieved our security needs, we could have an open policy of what we had intended to do. So we had non-intrusive verification because the Americans claimed their satellites could pick up the volume at which the enrichment plant or the gas centrifuges worked.

So they could pick up whether we were doing 93 percent or not. And at the time we were negotiating what I remember is going from 93 percent to 60 percent. Not going to 5 percent, which is non-weapons grade.

So there was a kind of cutback in a way, a self-imposed restraint?

Yes.

In that first period of your prime ministership?

Yes.

So what were these non-intrusive inspections?

That the satellites could pick up the speed at which the enrichment plant was working so with those revolutions -- because at 60 percent you beat at a certain level and at 90 percent you beat at another level.

Were you surprised by the nature of the non-intrusive inspections? It must have come as a shock.

I don't know, this is what I was told, you do so many things in government that the way you retain your memory is to retain what are the important things. I don't remember who told me, but I was told the Americans would be able to monitor what we were doing.

So at that stage in 1989 you gave them the reassurance that you will not put the components together?

Yes.

And you imposed the voluntary self-restraint of cutting back to 60 percent [enrichment]?

Yes.

So the amount, the volume of highly enriched uranium decreased?

Yes, so then if you want to make more weapons you have to take that 60 and go to 90. So you always have the option. What we said was that so long as our security is not threatened, we will not put the device together.

So we kept open the option of putting our device together in the event of what we perceived as a security threat, which to our minds meant that if India detonated a device we would have the option of putting it together and, if there was a war, and we felt it was necessary for our deterrence, we would be putting it together.

So we did not rule out putting it together.

Did you think this was realpolitik or a moral position you were taking?

It was realpolitik and also a moral position which we also had long discussions on. There was also the argument made that why should we give [in to] America, we should try and see what we can do to disperse our capacity. We do have the uranium one. But I thought that was too messy and that would involve a whole secret network of trying to set up alternative laboratories because these were known. Also trying to shift the materials. I didn't like that. I argued how many times do we need to destroy each other and at the end of the day they agreed with me.

In return for our restraint the Americans agreed to suspend the Pressler Amendment and give us the aid.

Did they do that?

Yes, $4.6 billion was the quid pro quo, whereas under Zia we got less, we got $4.2 billion for fighting the Soviets. But the Soviets were gone and we got $4.6 billion and, instead of getting 20 or 40 F-16s that we got under Zia, we got 60 F-16s. They weren't delivered because my government got overthrown in 1990 and the Americans alleged that we had crossed the line and that we had gone back to 90 per cent uranium enrichment.

What about A Q Khan?

A Q Khan and Munir didn't get on, but after overthrowing me I believe it was in 1990 that they separated them and made it the Khan Laboratories.

I believe AQ has a huge ego.

But he didn't have a huge ego then. The huge ego only started from 1990. When I knew him he was a modest man. I first came across him in 1988 when he came to see me with Munir. They seemed like government servants ready to carry out government orders. The prime minister had called them, they came.

In one of his articles published in Hurmat, Qadir talks about the Partition deaths he witnessed at Bhopal railway station.

He never mentioned that to me. He offered his services to my father, that was that.

He talks about how he was mistreated when he crossed the border from India to Pakistan, mistreated by Indian forces.

I only know that from 1990, around 1990-93, the two institutions of the PAEC and Kahuta Laboratories were separated. They were called Kahuta Laboratories, but their name was changed to A Q Khan Laboratories at some stage. Not under my government, but it was changed. After my election there was an attempt to woo him and since my father had made the nuclear device, there was also a need to have a symbol.

I think it was after Nawaz Sharif detonated the nuclear devices that AQ became 'Father of the Nuclear Bomb.' But actually everything was done before.

Khan never said anything to you like 'Prime Minister, we must teach these wicked Hindus a lesson'?

Never. He was quiet, only spoke when questioned. He would come to me obviously with recommendations. By the time we had finished with the nuclear -- because we had this agreement -- all that was left with nuclear was miniaturisation and preservation. And then I had established the missile technology board.

I can tell you that in 1989 we established the missile technology board and he [Khan] saw me in that connection, he had discussions with me in connection with missile development technology.

How did he move into missiles from bombs?

That he would have to answer, but he saw me about it and Beg [then army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg, above left] saw me about it and I looked into the subject and I saw we were able to develop missiles that were short of MTCR [Missile Technology Control Regime]. So I agreed to develop Pakistan's [missile force]. We were worried because we were dependent on the F-16s for delivery, we didn't know that the plane could be shot down before it crossed or what would happen. So we needed missile technology. India had developed its own missile technology. I developed missile technology in 1989 and I made certain important decisions with regard to it.

In 1993 when I went to [North] Korea it was to get their technology to compare it with our technology. But we had already developed when I was prime minister from 1989 in time for 1997. I was going to missile-test the Zulfiqar, which after my overthrow was called the Ghauri and which I thought was real mean pettiness. The world calls it the Nodong, but it was not the Nodong.

Your second term as prime minister in 1993?

1993 autumn to 1996. I took over when Pakistan was bankrupt, it was on the brink of being declared a terrorist state, the first attacks on the World Trade Centre had already taken place. The Americans had cut off all aid because of proliferation concerns.

Where was the enrichment programme then? Had it returned to 90 percent?

When I took over they said it had gone down to 5 percent... so obviously somewhere along the time during Nawaz's term -- we were bankrupt, the [1993] World Trade Centre attack had taken place and we were on the brink of being declared a terrorist state -- so perhaps in a bid to cool international tempers, they agreed to go to 5 percent uranium enrichment.

Later you hauled Pakistan out of a crisis?

Yes, the nuclear crisis in the first term and the terrorism crisis in my second term.

Did you initiate the revival of the nuclear programme in your second term?

No, I didn't. I called them and asked, 'What line did we cross?' Nobody could find what line had been crossed. I thought it unacceptable as prime minister that we should lose the $4.6 billion package and lose all the F-16s and be isolated because of intelligence by the US. We never got the 4.6, it was all cut. We got whatever was the first tranche and the rest was all cut.

There had been a quid pro quo and money had been released from '89 till 1990. But in the summer of 1990 [US] Ambassador [Robert] Oakley came to see me and he said they had picked up some intelligence reports that we are crossing the line. He didn't define it. I took it to mean that we are back to making weapons grade uranium. Because in my mind, for whatever reason, it stuck that they used to verify through the revolutions of the centrifuge.

I told Oakley I would look into it, but he said, 'Not yet, I'm just mentioning it to you and I will come back to you.' The following month he came back to me and said, 'Yes, I'm making this officially.' He was sharing this with me. So then I informed Beg about it and I informed Ishaq [President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, above right] and said I want a meeting of the Nuclear Board where I planned to tell them about it and call the scientists to find out what was behind it.

Ishaq told me, 'You are going abroad on a tour, we'll have a meeting when you come back.' I was going on a tour of some Muslim countries in connection with a meeting of some Islamic nations. There was to be a resolution on Kashmir, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the Kashmiri people had risen up, and we thought this was a good moment to press for their political freedom.

The OIC [Organisation of Islamic Conference] had never passed a resolution on Kashmir, so I travelled to a sea of Muslim countries between June and July 1990. When I was abroad in July the US sent a special envoy who I understand was Bob Gates [then deputy national security adviser to President George H W Bush] -- but this will have to be verified -- he was co-ordinating with the foreign office.

First of all, they should never have let him come when I was going abroad because I was going abroad for six months, or three months, but they called him and then they said 'she's travelling'. Then they would tell me 'he's coming to see you in Bahrain', or 'he's coming to see you in Egypt', or whatever country I happened to be in. But he would never come, or if he would come the meeting would never take place.

I felt I was a victim of a conspiracy. They were doing something, I don't know what they were doing, but they did not want me to call a meeting of that board. They would not want me to call a meeting of the scientists because I would find out. So what I think they did was sabotage that meeting and after having sabotaged that meeting, the meeting never took place.

I went back to Pakistan, I told Ishaq, he set a date for the meeting at the end of July and one day before he cancelled it and said it would be in August. On August 6 my government was dismissed.

What happened next?

When I got back into government, I was curious and wanted to know what [had] happened. They said there was no explanation. Because of the lack of a satisfactory explanation, I said this would not do and asked what they proposed. It was then agreed [that] we would put security inside the laboratories, that we can monitor the scierntists and ensure the scientists do what they are ordered.

As far as you were concerned, were the laboratories still enriching at a non-weapons grade 5 percent?

No, it was 60 percent when I left office. But when I came back to office they had committed to 5 percent. First of all, we had security outside the laboratories, right? Now we have security inside the laboratories from 1993 under a major general. So now there is no way a scientist can do anything independently without being monitored.

Your concern was that someone was crossing the line and you didn't want that to happen?

Yes, they had to follow government policy. To prevent anybody violating government policy -- one of the explanations given was that maybe some of the cores had degenerated, and to replenish the cores the scientists had started enriching.

I said that was unsatisfactory because if the core degenerated then they must bring it to the attention of the prime minister and the board and then start, take our permission to redoing it to 95 percent. But to do it on their own was not right.

Between 1993 and 1996 you did not authorise the revival of 95 percent enrichment?

No, no. They had given a commitment of 5 percent and they kept it at that. Although our commitment was at 60 percent. Because they had brought it to 5 percent, we kept it for confidence because we always felt that the way to safeguard the programme was through international confidence and that if the world was frightened of a Muslim bomb...  in the case of India, India was not going to export it to another country because India wanted it for itself. There was no Hindu civilisation of pan-Islamic view.

In the case of Israel they were not going to give it because there was only one Israel. But in the case of Pakistan there was always a fear that it is going to turn into a replicating bomb that will be used in a series of countries. So there was a much greater fear about our bomb, or perhaps there was a greater fear about Muslims because half the problems are in the Muslim world.

I don't know what was the fear in the world community, or maybe it was because of Israel. I can't say, but I can say there was a great deal of insecurity. At the same time, having nuclear status was a matter of security for Pakistanis and, sadly, though it was a weapon of mass destruction, it was a matter of pride because people felt we were as good as India. India had developed one, we had developed one. If their scientists are good, our scientists are equally good.

So the bomb reassured the national psyche?

In that sense it covered two aspects of the Pakistan national psyche and for a country that had been disintegrated and had gone through the horrors of Partition and considered Kashmir under occupation, this was a saving grace, that we can compete equally with India.

Is it possible that rogue elements assisted by the Pakistan military and jihadis started playing around with the nuclear programme from 1990 onwards?

It is possible, but not probable, for certain reasons. In 1989 I learned from one of the journalists who was tied to the elements trying to overthrow my government that those elements were basically the intelligence, the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]  people and MI [Military Intelligence]. They were trying to overthrow my government, but these people had some journalists very close to them. One of them planned to take A Q Khan to a Muslim country and keep him there.

They told him they would take him on a pilgrimage -- it's not Saudi Arabia -- they would go for a pilgrimage and keep him there. I saw this as an attempt to embarrass me by suggesting that Benazir Bhutto is anti-Pakistan and she's a security threat and she's responsible for the disappearance of our nuclear scientist. So I passed orders that no scientist could leave the country without government permission. And security guards.

That means such scientists could never leave the country without the government's explicit knowledge?

There was one other thing I may have inadvertently done [and that] was introduce them to the international blackmarket. At that time my parliamentarians would come to me in Parliament House and say they had been approached by Russian scientists wanting to sell enriched uranium, this was in '89-90. There were Soviet scientists who were starving, they weren't given their salaries, they were poor, they wanted to meet me and I didn't want to meet them.

They approached the government, parliamentarians, so here they come and tell me, 'We don't have to worry if we can't make uranium, we can buy uranium. Okay?'

I thought it was a trap set up by the intelligence. So I then sent them to the ISI to investigate.

Unfortunately, if it was not a trap, I introduced the ISI to the network.

I sent the information to the ISI and I never got a report back. I assumed it was a trap because I never got a report back. I remember this incident because it didn't happen just once.

The first time I said 'no, no' and thought it would die. But it was persistent and when it was persistent I sent it to the ISl to investigate.

Is this the time Khan started going to Libya and Iran?

Probably not Libya. I don't know, we need a full investigation to see whether the president changed the policy or the army chief defied the intelligence, or the intelligence defied the army chief, or whether elements of the intelligence bought over by Al Qaeda joined up with the scientists. We don't really know, all this is possible.

So barring an investigation, my suspicion is that Iran happened between 1990 to 1993.

Where does Libya fit in?

Libya comes much later when I was overthrown a second time. Either they offered it to them then or maybe they offered it in my first term, I don't know. But in February 2000 Musharraf went to Libya. In July 2000 Musharraf's commerce minister and friend took out a full page ad offering nuclear related products for sale.