Geo Reporter Approaches a 13-Year Old for Sex

US FBI and Police Arrested Geo TV, Jang, The News Reporter in March 2008

Pakistani-American Journalist Nayyar Zaidi Still Locked Up in an Ohio Jail Since March 20/ 2008.

Mr Syed Haider K. Zaidi (pen name: Nayyar Zaidi) – Washington Correspondent or Washington Bureau Chief of Pakistan’s
Geo News TV, The News International (English newspaper) and Daily Jang (Urdu newspaper) – was arrested by the US FBI and the Police on March 20/ 2008 in Ohio, USA, on sex crimes charges. He is still locked up in an Ohio jail since March 2008. Read the following five American media-press news reports about Pakistani-American journalist Nayyar Zaidi who lives in Woodbridge, Virginia, USA and also read the version/ views of Mr. Zaidi about his arrest, detention and prosecution through the two Internet-Web links attached at the end of this special report:

Publisher: THE INDEPENDENT – Massillon, Ohio, USA

Man Arrested for Trying to Meet Teen

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio, USA, March 20/ 2008 - Authorities arrested a Virginia man Thursday accused of traveling to
Jackson Township to have sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Syed Haider Kar Zaidi, 64, of 12776 Captains Cove, Woodbridge, Va., was taken into custody at 3 p.m. in a parking lot at 4220 Belden Village St. N.W., according to jail records. The arrest culminated a two month investigation by local police and the FBI’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Jail records show Zaidi developed an online relationship with the girl and arranged to meet her for sex in the Belden Village area. The girl Zaidi was communicating with actually was an undercover officer.  Zaidi faces felony charges of attempted unlawful sex with a minor, attempted child endangering, attempted illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance and importuning. Zaidi was the task force’s 98th arrest.

Feds Eyeing Internet ‘Predator’

Virginia man is 98th arrest by FBI task force; bond set at $ 200,000

MASSILLON, Ohio, USA, March 24/ 2008  – Federal charges are likely for a Virginia man who allegedly arranged to have sex with
a 13-year-old girl in Jackson Township.

Jeffrey Haupt, attorney for Syed Haider Kar Zaidi, 64, said Monday it
appears his client’s case will be sent to U.S. District Court in
Youngstown. Haupt said Zaidi could appear before a magistrate or judge later this week. “I have been in discussion with local and federal authorities about this case,” he said.

Zaidi was arrested Thursday night in a parking lot at 4220 Belden
Village St. N.W. following a two month investigation by local police
and the FBI’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Zaidi was
the task force’s 98th arrest.

According to jail records, Zaidi developed an online relationship with the girl and planned to meet her for sex in the Belden Village area. An undercover officer assumed the girl’s identity in an Internet chat room. Zaidi reportedly drove to the area from his home in Woodbridge, Va.

The case could be moved to federal court for several reasons, Haupt said, including the fact that Zaidi crossed state lines, the nature of the material involved in the case and the age of the purported victim. Local charges filed against Zaidi would be dropped if the case is transferred to the federal level, according to Haupt. “He would remain in the custody of the federal government pending an indictment or the filing of a bill of information,” Haupt said.
Zaidi was arraigned Monday in Massillon Municipal Court on felony
charges of attempted unlawful sex with a minor, attempted child
endangering, attempted illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented
material or performance and importuning.

He remains in the Stark County Jail in lieu of $ 200,000 bond. Haupt said he has advised family members not to post bond.

“I’m very confident if he does (post bond) that he will be taken into
federal custody,” Haupt said.
http://www.indeonline.com/crime/x1012430497?view=print
http://www.indeonline.com/crime/x1059917866?view=print

Publisher: THE REPOSITORY – Canton, Ohio, USA

MASSILLON, Ohio, USA, March 21/ 2008  – Syed Haider Kar Zaidi, 64, of Woodbridge, Va., was arrested Thursday by the FBI Internet Crimes Against Children task force on felony charges of attempted unlawful sex with a minor, attempted children endangering, attempted illegal use of a minor for sex performance and importuning, jail records show.

Police said Zaidi traveled from his home to Damon’s at 4220 Belden
Village St. NW in Jackson Township, expecting to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex. FBI agents and Massillon and Jackson Township police arrested him. Among his interests was the production of child pornography, records show. He is the 98th person arrested by the FBI task force.

BOUND OVER

AKRON, Ohio, USA, March 27/ 2008  – A federal grand jury will hear the case of a Virginia man who authorities say traveled to Ohio to have sex with whom he believed to be a 13-year-old girl. The FBI Internet Crimes Against Children task force arrested Syed Haider Kar Zaidi, 64, of Woodbridge, Va., last week. Zaidi traveled from his home to Jackson Township to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex
after communicating online with a law-enforcement officer posing as the girl’s mother, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District
Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Zaidi also faces state charges of attempted unlawful sex with a minor, attempted child endangering, attempted illegal use of a minor for sex performance and importuning, jail records show.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Haupt said it is likely that the state
charges will be dismissed as the federal case proceeds. Task Force Nets Alleged Child Abuser

JACKSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio, March 21/ 2008  – A Virginia man has become the 98th person arrested by the FBI Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in a sex sting Thursday in the Belden Village area.

Syed H. Zaidi, 44 [64], of Woodbridge, who works for a newspaper in Pakistan, was arrested at 3 p.m. Thursday in the parking lot
at 4220 Belden Village St. NW, Stark County Jail records said. He was charged with pandering obscenity involving juveniles, felony child endangering, importuning and unlawful sexual conduct with children.

He was arrested by Massillon Police with assistance by the township police, FBI and Fugitive Crimes Task Force after an investigation that stretched nearly two months, police said.

Police said Zaidi used the Internet to arrange sexual activity with a
13-year-old girl.

Reach Repository writer Lori Monsewicz at (330) 580-8309 or e-mail: lori.monsewicz@cantonrep.com .

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=404372
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=405064
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=404447
Ohio ICAC: http://www.ohioicac.org
U.S. FBI: http://www.fbi.gov

(1) Pakistani Journalist Questioned By FBI
http://www.rcfp.org/news/mag/27-3/new-somejour.html

(2) Nayyar Zaidi Behind Bars in USA!
http://isalim.blogspot.com/2008/07/nayyar-zaidi-behind-bars-in-usa.html

Shortage of Electricity in Pakistan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The country is facing a huge electric power crisis today. This crisis appears insurmountable in the near or even long-term future, unless proper understanding and correct implementation is undertaken on priority basis.

The electricity shortfall is estimated to cross 4200MW, or 35 per cent of the country’s demand, by end of December 2009 because of massive reduction in water discharges for irrigation and resultant fall in hydropower generation.

This will result in a countrywide loadshedding of seven to eight hours a day.

The Indus River System Authority (Irsa) has decided to reduce water releases from Tarbela dam to 10,000 cusec with effect from Dec 26 from the current flows of 28,000 cusec. 

Likewise, releases from Mangla dam would be reduced to 5,000 cusec from the current 21,000 cusec.

The total power generation by December 2009 stands at about 11,500MW against a demand of about 12,600MW, leaving a shortfall of about 1100MW.

The peak hydropower generation currently stood at around 3,545MW which would drop to about 400MW from Feb 26 when the revised water management plan comes into force.

At present, Wapda is generating about 1400MW from Tarbela,

1160MW from Ghazi Barotha,

694MW from Mangla and

about 280MW from Warsak, Chashma and small dams put together.

The generation from hydel resources would decline by more than 3,000MW a day and increase the shortfall to more than 4200MW.

A 500MW shortfall translated into an average countrywide loadshedding of one hour a day.

At present total power production capacity in the country is about 19,500 MW, out of which Hydel Power is only 6,500 MW, balance of 13,000 MW is thermal either using Natural Gas or Furnace Oil. Small capacity of 450 MW is Nuclear and only 150 MW is through coal.

Although gas is to be provided for 5800 MW to various thermal plants, but in actual fact much less gas is being made available, the deficiency is being filled through furnace oil. It can be inferred that in the recent past, only furnace oil was used as fuel for about 9000 MW generation.

It is very important to understand the consequence of the prevailing situation. Current price of furnace oil is about Rs 49,000 per ton, which amount upto Rs 49/- per kg. On an average one kg of furnace oil produces 3.8 kWh of electricity. Thus, the cost of furnace oil for generating one unit of electricity is about Rs 13. On top of this the fixed cost of a thermal plant works out to be about Rs 3 per unit. Therefore, one unit (kWh) of the electricity produced by all thermal plants using furnace oil is Rs 16 per unit. According to WAPDA/IPP agreement, the private power producers will charge WAPDA the actual fuel cost for which they have a direct contract with PSO. As we all know that WAPDA tariff charged from the consumers is about Rs 5 per unit (kWh).

The production cost of furnace oil electricity is Rs 16 per unit, add to it the transmission, distribution cost (including loses), “the total cost of such electricity works out to approximately Rs 22 per kWh. The difference between WAPDA tariff and the furnace oil electricity is Rs17 per kWh.” It is estimated that the country consumes at least 25 billion units of electricity produced annually through furnace oil, which amounts to the total deficit of Rs 425 Billion. If WAPDA has to balance its books it would require a subsidy of Rs 425 Billion. This deficit is somewhat reduced due to cheap power produced through hydel energy and natural gas, but the deficit cannot change substantially, unless bulk of electricity is produced through hydel energy. Obviously, a deficit of Rs 300-350 Billion cannot be sustained, the government does not have resources to pay such a huge subsidy, it is also not feasible to increase the power tariff very much. Therefore the power crisis is far greater than what is being perceived. In the absence of extremely heavy subsidy, WAPDA is delaying payments to IPPs and also to the oil companies. The result is that IPPs are now producing much less electricity than their capacity.

To any planner, it should be obvious that the country cannot afford electricity produced through oil. Indigenous fuels like coal, gas, atomic will have to be developed and developed quickly. The final solution however lies in depending on the hydroelectric renewable energy, but unfortunately the narrow minded bickering on construction of dams has persuaded the planners to find an easy solution, which we cannot afford any more. Since the shortage or high price of electricity has severe detrimental effect on all sectors of economy, the situation calls for concerted short-term, medium-term and long-term actions to overcome the problem of energy shortage.

Way Forward: In the short-term, the shortages have to be somehow met. The foremost immediate action which can give some relief is the conservation of energy. The government has already announced certain measures like shutting down power on billboards, hoardings and neon signs. Recently in Lahore supersize televisions have been installed on important traffic points. In order to keep the temperature down air conditioners are installed behind these sets. In spite of government directions, the energy saving measures are not being implemented. Shops use excessive lights, which can be conveniently reduced. A suggestion that cities be divided in zones, and the market on these zones be closed on different days, can also save peak time energy usage. In order to implement conservation measures, the nazims, naib nazims should visit the areas and try to convince and negotiate with the people, shopkeepers etc requesting them to cooperate in the overall interests.

At present the IPPs, and WAPDA owned thermal plants are averaging about 50 percent plant factor, which means that they are not being used to their potential level, 70 to 80 percent plant factor is quite feasible; this would require better maintenance of such plants. A higher plant factor on these power stations can provide 20 to 30 percent more energy, which will circumvent the present shortages to a certain extent. Improving the plant factor of the existing plants is far more economical then setting up new plants, although new plants will still be needed. One of the reasons for low plant factor is that the funds are not made available for the purchase of oil, solution for this factor will help in short term increase in energy production. The government has announced that immediately 1200 MW of additional plants will be set-up. If these plants will operate on furnace oil, the deficit will further increase. At present the country has about 28 Trillion cft of recoverable gas available, the yearly consumption is about 1.2 Trillion cft, which means that even if gas consumption is increased, the existing recoverable gas will be sufficient for the next 15 years. Therefore the additional thermal generation should be based on gas, but in order to make additional gas available, the gas pressure and its transmission system will have to be enhanced. The money saved by using gas instead of furnace oil, should be invested in developing new gas fields which have already been discovered.

Mid and Long Term: The oil prices are not going to come down drastically, therefore all efforts are needed to stay away from oil. For thermal plants only Coal and Natural Gas should be used. Vast deposits of coal exist at Thar, but it is inconceivable why the mining of this coal has not yet started. There are a number of new gas fields discovered; but their development has been put on the back burner, again for some unknown reasons. The gas purchase agreement with Iran be finalised immediately, even without India. A large power station using this gas can be installed at Gwadar, 500 KV transmission lines can bring the power to load centres. In addition agreement with Kazakistan be persued diligently for the import of gas.

Currently the country loses 29 billion units of electricity annually due to heavy losses in the system. All efforts must be genuinely applied to reduce the losses. If losses are reduced by even 5 percent, the saving will be over 7 Billion rupees.

For hydroelectric projects, the large ones can only be built on the Indus River, where not only hydroelectricity can be produced, but highly needed water storage can also be a by-product. Some legitimate objections on the environment and social impacts of large dams are there, but solutions for such objections can be satisfactorily found. The will of the government leaders is needed, with the present coalition partnership in the centre, matters can be resolved. Experts from various provinces can get together and put forward a solution for mitigating the objections. It was due to the clear vision of the leadership that the Tarbela Dam was constructed, without which where would we have been today. Similar visionary approach is needed and needed now.

There are a number of other attractive runs of the river hydel projects which are being offered to the Private Sector. None of these projects have yet started, because the tariff is still not finalised. With the huge losses being accumulated in thermal plants, again it is strange that the hydel projects in the private sector are not being encouraged. Under the present circumstances, a rational and market oriented policy has to be adopted, hopefully the present government will immediately look into this.

It is good to know that the work on Neelum Jhelum Hydro Project (900MW) has started by WAPDA.

The current power crisis is grossly due to very high oil prices, and the country has to prepare itself at least for the next several years to somehow cope with it, since no immediate cheaper alternate solutions are available. It has been a big set back that new Hydel Projects have not been undertaken, neither the indigenous coal mining has started, investments in the existing as well as new gas field have been lacking. The policy orientation needs a drastic modification and indigenous resource like hydel energy production as well as development of coal mining and new gas fields should be the top priority.

 

 

 

Pakistani Communists Speak

Pakistan has entered into a democratic period after passing through a long interval of military dictatorship. After 1977 president house has remained occupied, directly or indirectly, by representatives of Civil or Military Bureaucracy even when a government setup was civilian apparently. Now it can be hoped, after Mr. Asif Ali Zardari’s election as president of Pakistan, that the president house will not work as center of conspiracies and intrigues. Now, when the two offices of prime minister and president have been filled with elected representatives of people, it is their responsibility to keep the conspiring elements of civil military bureaucracy at a distance. They should accept the mandate given to democratic forces at different levels. They have to avoid the past undemocratic attitude of destabilizing the elected provincial governments. An elected civilian setup has emerged after a very protracted people’s struggle and the gains of this struggle have to be protected by all means. It is the joint responsibility of ruling coalition, parliamentary democratic forces, democratic forces outside parliament and Pakistani people to consolidate the hard earned democracy. 

 The newly elected government has to address certain problems faced by people on priority basis. Spiral of price hike, unemployment, poverty, decreasing purchasing power of middle class, menace of terrorism and scarcity of fundamental requirements of life have forced the common man to live a sub-human life. Masses expect an improvement in shortest possible time. Government will also have to take suitable long-term steps to give correct direction to internal and external policies. Restoration of original constitution of 1973, giving maximum autonomy to provinces, fighting militancy by administrative and political steps, making judiciary completely independent, decreasing dependence on International Monetary Institutions to minimum possible level, guarantying minimum wages to industrial and farms workers and necessary legislation for protecting their rights, restarting closed industrial units, giving equal rights to different religious communities and weaker segments of the society, making education free up to intermediate level and decreasing the cost of higher education, restoring confidence of people having separatist tendencies due to denial of their due rights for prolong period, implementing agricultural reforms announced during past periods, changing the privatization policy so as to keep services and profitable industry in public sector and immediate discontinuation of the blind process of selling the national assets, and stopping the policy of subservience to United States of America are some of the prerequisites for progress and prosperity of the country.

Since the establishment of real democratic order and its consolidation is the common responsibility of all democratic forces, it is the duty of democratic forces outside parliament and specially those of left to try to transform the elected civilian government into real democratic one. To organize joint activities on the basis of a minimum program will be a good start in that direction. Organizing peasant, labour and democratic conferences will help in protecting the seedling of democracy from anti-democratic forces, specially military establishment and their allies i.e.  International Monetary Institutions and International Imperialism. Government should also avoid trying to silence the voice of dissent. It should encourage positive criticism and should help grow democratic and left forces. If the creation of hurdles for political movements by intelligence agencies and their assistance to negative forces is not stopped, it may result, with the active involvement of America, in a very dangerous polarization of political forces in near future. We may, thus, witness emergence of two distinct camps comprising all fundamentalist and anti-democratic forces having Jihadi culture and right of center political parties on one side and all pro America so called liberal forces and ruling coalition on the other side. The two diagonally opposed forces may create anarchy in the name of fighting America or defeating fundamentalism. In this situation military generals may be tempted to takeover the reins of government in their hands and this may also effect the country’s geography.

Are the Ahmadis Wajibul Qatal?

In a program aired on September 7/ 2008 the anchor of the religious program ‘Alam Online’, Dr. Amir Liaquat Hussain–also former federal minister for religious affairs–declared the murder of Ahmadi sect members to be necessary (Wajib ul Qatal) according to Islamic teachings, because its followers don’t believe in the last prophet, Mohammad, peace be upon him. Dr. Amir repeated his instruction several times, urging fundamentalists Muslims to kill without fear.

While on air the anchor person also pressured the other two Islamic scholars (from two different sects) on the program to support the statement. This resulted in a unanimous decision among the scholars, on air during a popular television show, to urge lynching with the intent to kill. This was not a one-off. On September 9, Mr. Hussain answered a query with the comment that blasphemers are liable to be put to death.

According to the information received, at 1:15pm on September 8, 18 hours after the broadcast, six persons entered the Fazle Umer Clinic, a two-story hospital at Mirpur Khas city and two of them went to the second floor and started pressuring 45 year-old Dr. Abdul Manan Siddiqui to come downstairs to attend to a patient in crisis. Dr. Manan left his office and descended into an ambush. He was shot 11 times and died on the spot. His private guard was also shot and is in a serious condition. A woman was also injured by firing. The killers remained at the hospital until the doctor was declared dead, then they walked out of the building’s front entrance. Police registered the killers as unknown.

On September 9, 48 hours after the broadcast, Mr. Yousaf, a 75 year-old rice trader and district chief of the Ahmadi sect was killed on his way to prayer in Nawab Shah, Sindh province. Yousaf was fired on from people on motor bikes, and sustained three bullet wounds. He died on the way to the hospital. The assailants had taken a route past a police station. No one was arrested.

The Ahmadi sect was declared non-Islamic sect on September 7, 1974, through a constitutional amendment, and was labeled a minority sect. Since then, there has been open hatred of the sect by certain Islamic circles and fundamentalists across the Muslim world, and sect members suffer widespread discrimination. Ahmadi followers are not allowed to bury their dead in the ordinary grave yards of Muslims, and many of those buried before 1974 were shifted by fundamentalists.

Since 1984 (when statistics have been compiled) around 93 Ahmadis have been killed for their allegiance to their sect, with four killed so far this year, including Dr. Ghulam Sarwar on March 19 in Faisalabad, Punjab province and Mr. Basharat Mughal on February 24 in Karachi. The Dr. Siddiqui is the 15th medical doctor killed since 1984.

The government of Pakistan has not held the presenter of a popular TV program on Geo TV, accountable for stoking the already-prevalent religious hatred of Pakistan’s beleaguered Ahmadi minority, on 7 September, 2008.

Anchor person Dr Amir Liaquat Hussain declared, on air, the murder of Ahmadi sect members to be the religious duty of devout Muslims. He made the statement on Alim Online, a religious affairs program on Geo TV, which is a prominent Dubai-based Pakistani television channel. Hussain urged his two co-presenters to agree, and in a show on 9 September, he repeated the suggestion. In the 48 hours after the first broadcast, two Ahmadi community leaders were lynched and murdered, bringing the total number of targeted Ahmadi killings this year to four.

Hussain, a self-titled doctor, was, ironically, the minister for religious affairs in the Musharraf government. He regularly expresses an open hatred of Pakistan’s minority groups, and his influence stretches far by way of daily on-air sermons and articles he writes for the Daily Jang newspaper, published by the same media house.

Freedom of speech is an important right, but the right of the individual to personal safety and freedom from persecution is also important. That Pakistan allows the use of broadcasting tools to spread direct messages of intense harm and hatred as a religious duty, is utterly disturbing.

Religious intolerance flourishes in Pakistan, and there is very little done to temper the hatred felt by some Muslims for Ahmadi followers, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities. In some cases the government clearly tries to court fundamentalists with its leniency regarding these crimes. The two most recent Ahmadi deaths were carried out in broad daylight, in public, but no arrests have been made. Dr Hussain has not been held accountable in any way, either by his employer or the government.

Ideally, a case should be initiated and Dr Hussain should be produced before the law. Geo TV must, at the very least, offer a full apology for its involvement in two murderous lynching cases, and must present a new list of broadcasting standards that it pledges to uphold. That religious hatred can bloom so publicly and remain unpunished is an embarrassment to a country that hopes to be taken seriously outside of its borders.

Dr Qadeen Khan Aspires to Become President

By Simon Henderson

After the resignation of Musharraf, who will be the next president of Pakistan? A controversial politician such as Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, or a nonpolitical figure? If the latter, it might, just might, be the detained nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of lawyers in the Pakistani city of Lahore marched in support of Khan’s candidacy. His actual election, requiring a majority vote in the national assembly, would shock the world, which was aghast at revelations, four years ago, that Khan had sold nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. But it would be justice of sorts.

Khan was not a rogue agent selling centrifuges to enrich uranium – and enrich himself. He was a loyal and obedient servant of a succession of military and political regimes in Islamabad. Generals and prime ministers traded his talents, which also included making an atomic bomb and two different missiles capable of carrying it, for a range of diplomatic and political favours.

That, at least, is his story. He has been telling it to me for more than a year, correcting what he regards as the falsehoods and errors in the books published about him. Their authors never managed to contact Khan so relied on the claims of his detractors. But, circumventing his guards, I did manage to reach him and made a simple request: tell me your version. I have hundreds of thousands of his words, as well as letters, photographs and video. My biography of him is nearly complete.

Khan’s fall from grace was spectacular. Twice awarded Pakistan’s highest honour for leading the teams that created the country’s nuclear strike force, he was forced to make a televised confession about his proliferation activities – and take all the blame himself. For four years he has been confined to his Islamabad home. Yet in neighbouring rival India, A P J Abdul Kalam, seen as Khan’s counterpart and popularly known as “the missile man”, went on to serve as his nation’s president from 2002 to 2007.

The political demise of Musharraf still leaves several obstacles to Khan’s rehabilitation, never mind his election as head of state. There are many people who do not want the real story to emerge. Musharraf himself said in June that the true story “is a confidential issue . . . a very serious matter, as Pakistan may suffer”.

Within Pakistan, Khan’s successes – and impatience with bureaucratic obstacles and rivals – caused much envy and anger. For three decades a sub-plot of the country’s nuclear programme was the antagonism between the Khan Research Laboratories and the country’s official nuclear authority, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

Pakistani leaders encouraged rivalry between the teams trying to make highly enriched uranium and the other nuclear explosive, plutonium. Khan’s team won. His team was also the recipient of a gift from China of a design for an atomic bomb and enough highly enriched uranium for two devices, after Beijing decided to back Khan to jump-start Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. I remember being told about China’s nuclear generosity by an outraged British official in the 1980s. I later asked what Beijing had received in return. It was an enrichment plant.

The plant is at Hanzhong in central China. C-130 Hercules transports of the Pakistan air force made more than 100 flights to China carrying centrifuge equipment. Beijing needed the plant, not for bombs but to fuel its nuclear power plants. Centrifuge technology is good for both levels of enrichment, hence the current concern that Iran’s nascent plant at Natanz has a military purpose. China could not make the Pakistan-supplied centrifuges work properly, so replaced them with Russian centrifuges. What happened to the Pakistani centrifuges? A good question. They were not returned to Pakistan. Could they have ended up in Iran?

Pakistani nuclear cooperation with Iran began after a visit from Ali Khamenei, then Iran’s president and now supreme leader, in 1986. The collaboration was ordered by President Zia ul-Haq, then Pakistan’s military dictator who, five years earlier, had publicly declared that Pakistan would “acquire [nuclear technology] . . . even if we have to beg, borrow or steal [it]“.

Many outsiders first heard of Khan after Colonel Gadaffi’s sudden announcement in 2003 that Libya was giving up its weapons of mass destruction programmes. Foreign businessmen who had supplied Khan had been commissioned by the Libyans to build an enrichment plant. The whole deal had been instigated by Bhutto, assassinated in December 2007, but, confronted by the US, Musharraf blamed Khan, prompting the nuclear scientist’s arrest and incarceration. The explanation suited Washington which, post 9/11, needed Pakistan’s help to fight Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and stop the use of sanctuaries in the border region.

Apart from Iran and Libya, the other main sin laid at Khan’s door is North Korea. Having built an atomic bomb for Pakistan by 1984, Khan had no means of being able to deliver it. One version was adapted for use by Pakistan’s American-supplied F-16 fighter bombers; another was put on the Ghaznavi missile, the first Pakistan-produced version of China’s M-11 rocket. It was not until Khan won authorisation to buy manufacturing rights for North Korea’s No-dong missile that Pakistan had a missile capable of reaching nearly all of neighbouring India, which had first tested a bomb in 1974.

The North Korean missile, known in Pakistan as the Ghauri (and, in Iran, as the Shehab-3), was manufactured at the Kahuta enrichment facility outside Islamabad. While at Kahuta, North Korean scientists helped fit the nuclear warhead to the Ghauri and also learnt about centrifuges.

In his biography, Musharraf said Khan had shipped examples of centrifuges to North Korea. Correct, but with the connivance and at the instruction of the Pakistan military. North Korea now probably has a functioning enrichment plant but has not admitted its existence to US diplomats negotiating the country’s de-nuclearisa-tion. It is already sitting on a stockpile of highly enriched uranium courtesy of Stalin, the Soviet leader.

Musharraf’s depiction of Khan as a rogue agent, and the international acceptance of this tale, had led to moments of farce. To the bemusement of foreign officials, one of the officials sent to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, had been involved in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s own clandestine purchasing network.

The notion that Khan might be a credible candidate to be Pakistan’s next president will cause apoplexy for many in Washington DC. But President Bush’s officials realise that, denied access to Khan, they had to rely on the version of what he did supplied to them by Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.

A postscript: Khan’s activities give a new explanation for the crash of President Zia’s C-130 plane in 1988, in which Arnold Raphel, the US ambassador, and General Herbert Wassom, head of the military mission, also died. Wing Commander Mash’hood Hassan, the plane’s pilot, had also been flying Khan’s centrifuge equipment to China. On one such trip he confided in a colleague of Khan that he hated Zia, holding him responsible for the murder of a local religious leader: “The day Zia flies with me, that will be his last flight.” The aircraft plummeted to the ground soon after taking off, killing all on board.