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We can deploy nuclear weapons in days, crows A Q Khan

Within days of declaring itself a nuclear power, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, said his country could produce nuclear weapons within days.

"It won't need months or weeks, we can deploy nuclear weapons in a matter of days,'' Khan said in an interview.

The man who has achieved hero status in Pakistan as the father of the nuclear bomb, boasted that Pakistan's nuclear and missile technology surpassed India's.

The detonation of five nuclear devices by India more than two weeks ago launched the Asian subcontinent on the nuclear road and on Thursday and again on Saturday, Pakistan one-upped its neighbour and exploded six devices.

Prior to its first set of tests last Thursday, Pakistan deployed its medium-range Ghauri missile around the testing site in the Chagai hills of south-western Baluchistan, fearing an attack by India on its nuclear installations.

But when Saturday's test was completed, Khan said the missiles were pulled back and returned to storage.

Khan said Pakistan already has embarked on ''serial production'' of the Ghauri missile, which has a range of roughly 1,500 kilometres.

''We have already gone into serial production of the Ghauri and we are capable of capping it with nuclear weapons,'' he said.

''These devices are small enough to be deployed on our Ghauri missile... It is a very big missile with a very big drive and thrust and to put a weapons system on it is no problem for us.''

Meanwhile, a top official of Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission said in an interview that the underground nuclear test conducted by the country on Saturday will help Islamabad develop small nuclear weapons.

Dr Samar Mubarak, who led the PAEC team which monitored the series of tests, said the five devices detonated on May 28 had yields of 40 to 45 kilotons of TNT. The sixth and last one was a miniature design of between 14 to 15 kilotons of TNT.

Dr Mubarak was quoted by the Urdu-language newspaper Jangas saying that Pakistan had the capacity to explode even more powerful devices, but said the bigger a nuclear bomb, the bigger is the risk of damage for the country firing it.

Pakistan's retaliatory tests on May 28 were three times more powerful than the five carried out by India on May 11 and 13, the PAEC official claimed.

No more tests were planned for the time being, he said.

Dr Mubarak rejected reports of a release of radioactivity at the test sites in south-western Baluchistan, close to its borders with Afghanistan and Iran. "The proof is that we stayed in the area for 10 days and stand hale and hearty before you today," he said.

He said a team of 150 PAEC scientists which prepared and monitored the tests shared credit for making Pakistan a nuclear power along with experts from Kahuta Research Laboratories, also known as the Khan Research Laboratories after Dr A Q Khan, father of the Pakistani bomb.

He said PAEC alone had produced 100 nuclear scientists of leadership level.

UNI

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