AQ Khan's daughter hits back at Musharraf

People painted black by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf in his book are hitting back.

People painted black by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf in his book, In the Line of Fire, are hitting back, media reports said on Tuesday.

Dina Khan, daughter of nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who was disgraced for nuclear proliferation activities, has rejected as "ludicrous" Musharraf's claim that Khan had smuggled out a letter from his confinement in Islamabad instructing her to go public on Pakistan's nuclear secrets.

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She said in a statement in London that the letter was addressed to her mother and gave her father's "version of what actually transpired and requested my mother to release those details in the event of my father being killed or made to disappear".

She said the letter mentioned "people and places" but contained no nuclear blueprints or information.

Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, is currently recovering at his sister's house in Karachi after undergoing surgery for removal of his cancerous prostate gland. Despite being disgraced by the government, he continues to be a hero to many in this Muslim nation who think he is the victim of a conspiracy.

Khan allegedly passed on nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea through a network for money.

An opposition member of Parliament, Sherry Rehman, suggested the title of his memoirs should have been, In the Line of Hire.

A former colleague of Musharraf in the Army, General Ali Kuli Khan, has also rejected Muharraf's assertion in his book that he had advocated imposition of martial law when the country's civilian prime minister in 1998 asked the then army chief to resign for seeking a political role for the military through the creation of a National Security Council.

"I certainly advised General Jehangir Karamat not to resign as army chief but I did not stage a coup and impose martial law," Ali Kuli Khan told the newspaper The News.