Hoodbhoy says Khan is not a scientist

At a lecture in Washington, one of the country's foremost physicists, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, said that to call Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and his associates scientists was a "slur on science".

He insisted they were "bomb-makers" and not scientists.

According to a report from Washington, appearing in the Daily Times in a lecture at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Dr Hoodbhoy said Dr Khan was a metallurgist responsible for the enrichment of uranium required for a weapon, while the weapon was actually built by scientists at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

He said Pakistan had made the bomb in 1985-86, while the first contacts with Iran started in 1987 and continued until 2000.

The Pakistani anti-nuclear campaigner said it was not possible for Dr Khan to have passed on nuclear technology to other countries on his own.

The level of security at Kahuta was "incredibly high" he stated. He added that he knew from his own students, some of whom worked there, all that could have gone out of there unnoticed was perhaps "an idea or two" but there was no question of any equipment leaving those facilities undetected by the security personnel.

He said that Pakistan would now be forced into accepting a monitoring system that the international community would consider reliable and reassuring.

Dr Hoodhbhoy also accused India of starting the nuclear race in the subcontinent, and said that it was fortunate that the nuclear technology transferred to Libya was not utilised to make a bomb.