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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan sought to allay U.S. concern about the freedom of notorious nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, insisting Saturday that his network which allegedly supplied Iran and North Korea with atomic technology has been probed and dismantled and cannot rise again.
Khan, feted in Pakistan for his key role in making it a nuclear weapons state, emerged from five years of de facto house arrest on Friday after a court declared him a "free citizen" subject to a secret agreement with the government.
The move rang alarm bells in Washington, where the new administration has made countering the spread of nuclear weapons to countries including Iran a top foreign policy priority.
The White House said Friday that President Barack Obama wanted assurances from Pakistan that Khan isn't involved in the kind of activity that led to his detention. A State Department spokesman described Khan as a "serious proliferation risk."
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry countered on Saturday that authorities had already investigated Khan's past proliferation, shared its findings with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and put in tight controls to prevent anything similar from happening again.
"We have successfully broken the network that he had set up and today he has no say and has no access to any of the sensitive areas of Pakistan," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said. "A.Q. Khan is history."
How much latitude has been granted to Khan, who has begun distancing himself from his confession and denying he did anything illegal, remains unclear.
Khan's wife told The Associated Press on Saturday that her 72-year-old husband, who has suffered from a string of illnesses including cancer, was receiving friends at home and had not ventured out.
Hendrina Khan said visitors were still subject to security checks, and one of a dozen plainclothes officers outside his house on Saturday told an AP reporter that the government didn't allow Khan to speak to the media.
Khan was detained in December 2003, and admitted on television in early 2004 that he operated a network that spread nuclear weapons technology around the world. He was immediately pardoned by then President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and placed under de facto house arrest.
Khan began agitating for an end to the restrictions on him after Musharraf was ousted last year.
After Friday's court ruling, Khan indicated to reporters outside his house that while he had won "freedom," he would not be discussing Pakistan's nuclear program or who else might have been involved in leaking technology — questions that still puzzle experts trying to determine if part of his network is still operating.
"We don't want to talk about the past things," Khan said.
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Associated Press writers Chris Brummitt and Munir Ahmad contributed to this report.
