India has our N-design

PTI, Islamabad

Putting the entire blame of Pakistan's record of nuclear proliferation on disgraced nuclear scientist AQ Khan, President Pervez Musharraf has alleged that several Indians worked for Khan's network in Dubai and India's uranium enrichment technology "could be a copy" of Pakistani centrifuge design.

There is little doubt that AQ was the central figure in the proliferation network but he was assisted over the years by a number of money-seeking freelancers from different countries, Musharraf wrote in his book In the Line of Fire' squarely blaming the scientist who recently underwent surgery for prostrate cancer.

While these "freelancers" who included people from Holland, Switzerland, Dubai and Europe, simultaneously pursued their own business independently, "ironically the (Khan's) network based in Dubai had employed several Indians, some of whom have since vanished," Musharraf wrote in his biography.

"There is a strong probability that the Indian uranium enrichment programme may also have also have roots in the Dubai based network and could a copy of the Pakistani centrifuge design.

This has recently alluded to by an eminent American non-proliferation analyst," he said without giving the name of the US analyst.

Making Khan a villain of nuclear proliferation to Iran, Libya and North Korea, to which Khan who is currently lived in house detention admitted in a televised confession, Musharraf said: "I can say with confidence that neither the Pakistan Army nor any of the past governments of Pakistan was ever involved or had any knowledge of AQ's proliferation activities."