Word: khans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Dapper Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was always a man with a mission--even if it was long shrouded in obscurity. Some 30 years ago, he allegedly stole blueprints for enriching uranium from the top-secret Dutch lab where he worked. For decades, his team in Pakistan labored behind heavily guarded walls to produce enough of the fuel to make A-bombs. In 1998 he watched proudly as Pakistan detonated its first nuclear devices beneath the scorched desert hills of Baluchistan, shocking an unsuspecting world. A public hero at last to exultant countrymen, he was hailed throughout the Muslim world...
...Khan is earning new renown as the godfather of nuclear proliferation, a dangerous salesman who helped bring the Bomb within closer reach of other eager powers. Since Iran and Libya were exposed in recent months as nuclear-weapon owners in the making, Khan and more than six other scientists who worked with him, plus an undisclosed number of Pakistani diplomats and intelligence agents posted abroad, have been under investigation in Islamabad for sharing the playbook of atomic weapons with those states, well-placed foreign intelligence sources tell TIME. Khan has long been suspected of orchestrating Pakistan's nukes-for-missiles...
...intelligence officers have joined the Pakistani probe, hoping it will provide clues to unmask and stamp out clandestine nuclear-procurement networks. The one Khan pioneered for Pakistan is considered a model for would-be Bomb builders. "I've always thought that A.Q. Khan's Rolodex is the most important thing of all in giving people advice on how to put all the pieces together," says Robert Oakley, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Washington is worried that someone might barter away Pakistan's nuclear secrets to terrorists...
...question no one involved wants to address is whether Khan and his colleagues operated on their own or at the behest of the Pakistani government. President Pervez Musharraf, who under pressure from Washington sacked Khan as head of nuclear-weapons development in early 2001, insists that his four-year-old government has never dabbled in nuclear trade--whatever past regimes might have done. It's possible that Khan & Co. or the military and intelligence officers who long supported such deals acted independently. "I think that during his administration there was a lot going on," said Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat...
...general. Pakistan's government blamed Kashmir militants once supported by Musharraf, now aggrieved by his neglect. Eleven days later the SAARC meeting began in Islamabad, and the initial signals were tentative at best. When Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee arrived, his Pakistani counterpart, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, tried to greet him with a hug. Vajpayee smiled cordially but took a step back. When Vajpayee departed three days later, the hug between the two men was warm and reciprocal...