Terming his detention as “illogical,” disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan expressed hope Wednesday that the new government will release him from house arrest, but he said he has not yet heard anything on the matter. Khan has been mostly confined to his home since 2004, when he confessed to passing nuclear bomb technology to Iran, North Korean and Libya. Experts say questions remain about the extent of his dealings and whether other Pakistani leaders were involved. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Khan said former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other leaders of Pakistan's new government have voiced support for him in the past. He said, however, that the new leadership had not yet told him of any plans to let him move or speak freely. “So far they have just talked of love, and have not demonstrated it,” Khan said with a laugh. He noted that he was a senior citizen in fading health. “There is always a limit to anything. Now I am 72. It does not mean that I will spend the rest of my life sitting inside like this,” he said. In a separate first face-to-face interview in four years with Urdu-language Nawa-i-Waqt newspaper, Khan said: “The real hooliganism is that I have been confined, and it is the cause of all my ills.” The newspaper said Khan had complained of being the victim of illegal restrictions and expressed the hope that the new elected government would end the “unlawful” restrictions on him soon. Khan dismissed the previous government's explanation that he was being kept at his Islamabad villa for his own safety. “It is illogical reasoning,” Khan told the newspaper. “In 1979 a baseless case was registered against me in Holland (where he was charged with stealing nuclear secrets), I was traveling the whole world and there was no threat to my safety,” Khan said. Public affairs officials for the new government, which took office this week, and the parties who triumphed in February parliamentary elections were not immediately available for comment. New Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani did not mention Khan when he laid out his 100-day plan for the government on Saturday. Khan enjoys national hero status in Pakistan for his key role in helping it become a nuclear-armed nation like its neighboring archrival, India. Sharif was in power when Pakistan carried out its first and only nuclear test explosion in 1998. President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a 2001 military coup, pardoned Khan after his televised confession. US officials regularly praise Pakistan for helping prevent nuclear smuggling. Pakistan has refused to let foreign investigators question Khan, however, sustaining doubts about its insistence that the scientist had concealed his proliferation activities from the government and the army's top brass. Asked why he had accepted the blame for Pakistan's nuclear proliferation, Khan said he acted in the national interest. “People come and go. I will also go,” he said in his Associated Press interview. “The thinking was that no damage should be done to the country and the nation.” __
