On 4th February 2005, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan appeared on television and took the entire responsibility of nuclear proliferation activities upon himself. The world media protrayed him like a terror trader and he was held responsible for nuclear proliferation activities (to Iran, Libya, North Korea and offers to Iraq and Syria [1]).
Numerous articles, books and documentaries (e.g.[5]) appeared on the activities of A.Q.Khan and his network. His confession added more confusion to the issue. He was repeatedly accused of stealing documents from his firm (Urenco) in the Netherlands, using them to manufacture nuclear weapons for Pakistan and then selling it to other countries.
In reality, Urenco had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. The firm Urenco worked in the civilian domain and made Lightly-Enriched Uranium (LEU) for civil nuclear power plants. A.Q.Khan did not work on nuclear weapons and not even on Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU) during his stay in Netherlands. It is HEU that is needed for the nuclear bomb. LEU is used as fuel in light-water nuclear reactors for the generation of electricity. Therefore, even if some documents were copied from this firm, these were not enough to make HEU. LEU and HEU are two worlds apart.
