E-Paper
French writer exposes Khan's links with LeT
French writer Bernard-Henri Levy established Khan's links with the LeT, in an article on the Wall Street Journal's web site.
Pakistani scientist Dr. A.Q. Khan, the man behind the proliferation of nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, had connections to terrorist outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed a French observer.
In an article published in Wall Street Journal's web site, French writer Bernard-Henri Levy established Khan's links with the LeT, which he described as a fundamentalist terrorist group at the heart of the Al Qaeda, reports The News.
Describing Khan as a 'mad scientist' and a `fanatical Islamist', Levy further goes on to say that Khan sincerely believed that the "bomb should belong, if not to the Ummah itself, at least to its avant-garde, as incarnated by the Al Qaeda."
Terming Pakistan's nuclear capability "the Islamic Bomb", Levy suggests that, "Pakistan's nuclear weapons need to be secured. They cannot - will not - be secured by Pakistan alone."
He also advised that efforts should be made to seek Pakistan's consent for a double-key security system for its nuclear arsenal.
It was also inconceivable that Dr. Khan operated alone without orders or cover.
"On the one hand, the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is under control, and that not a warhead can budge without the authorities' knowledge, and on the other, Khan was acting alone, working on his own account, with no official connivance," says Levy.
Levy believes that Khan was at the center of an immense network, an incredibly dense web. "There were Dubai front companies, meetings in Casablanca and Istanbul with Iranian colleagues, complicities in Germany and Holland, Malaysian and Philippine agents, and detours through Sri Lanka, with Chinese and London connections - a world of crime and dirty war that the West, mired in a big game that is beginning to get ahead of it, has so blithely allowed to develop," he says in his article.
He wrote that the terrifying nuclear traffic continued well after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US. "A list trip to Pyongyang, his 13th, was made in June 2002 by the good Dr Khan; not to mention the ship inspected last August in the Mediterranean, transporting elements of future nuclear plant to Libya. The eyes of the world, emulating the eyes of America, were fixed on Baghdad, while the tentacles of nuclear proliferation were being extended from Karachi."
