Khan confessed to helping North Korea with the knowledge and approval of senior military commanders, among which two army chiefs and Gen Musharraf, Gen. Karamat (dismissed by Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif thus cooking his own goose later), now Ambassador to USA who secretly traveled to North Korea in December 1997. Khan claimed that Karamat was also aware of the terms of the barter deal between North Korea and Pakistan, as Pakistan test-fired a Ghauri missile in April 1998. Implicitly Musharraf knew too as after becoming army chief of staff in October 1998, he also took over the Ghauri program. In exchange, North Korea got centrifuge components between 1997-1999, with Khan’s network providing direct technical assistance between the years 1998-2000.

In 2000, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence conducted a charade raid on an aircraft chartered by the Khan Lab and bound for North Korea because it was claimed that senior military commanders were unaware of Khan's dealings with North Korea. The raid obviously yielded no evidence. As late as July 2002, Pakistani cargo planes were spotted by US Spy satellites in Pyongyang being loaded with missile parts. Now President, Gen Musharraf claimed that these were picking up surface-to-air missiles Pakistan had purchased. In April 2003, a cargo-ship containing aluminum tubing, intended for use as outer casings for G-2(P-2) centrifuges, was intercepted in the Suez Canal following German conclusion that it was headed for North Korea. It was also reported that Khan admitted that during a 1999 visit to an undisclosed location, an hour out of Pyongyang, he witnessed first hand what were described to be three plutonium nuclear devices produced by North Korea.

How ever, only in August 2005, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for the first time confirmed, during an interview with the Japanese news agency Kyodo, that Khan had transferred centrifuges and centrifuge parts as well as their designs on to North Korea.

September 19, 2005 Agreement with North Korea

After three years of confrontation, choice insults hurled at each other ( US and North Korea ) and off and on negotiations - a statement of principles intended to form a framework for an eventual agreement was signed on 19 September 2005 ,after four rounds of six-party talks in Beijing. Under intense pressure from its neighbors and the United States, North Korea signed up to the document that commits it - in theory - to scrapping its nuclear weapons and weapons programs and readmitting inspectors from IAEA. The North Korea's neighbors and the US, in return, have agreed to supply energy assistance and move towards diplomatic normalization. The US also promised it had no nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula and had no intention to attack the North Korea. However, it is to be seen how the details are worked out November to implement the agreement and how North Korea's nuclear claims would be verified.

While a fundamental disagreement over the scope of North Korea's nuclear capabilities has also not been addressed, the agreed statement looks like the minimum necessary face-saver to keep the diplomatic process alive .It was warmly welcomed in the region - perhaps more out of relief than any expectation of an early settlement. The accord is "an important turning point that will help peace take root," said a statement issued by the South Korean government. If North Korea has lied so has USA broken international laws and treaties, invaded Iraq against UN opposition, so there is little trust in each other.

Pakistan’s help to Iran;{mosgoogle right}

Following Iran's disclosure of uranium enrichment research and subsequent inspections last year, the central role of Pakistan in Iran's nuclear program was unearthed. According to media reports, Khan reportedly told Inter Services Intelligence officials that he transferred nuclear weapons technology so that other Muslim countries could use it to enhance their security.

Global Security.Org website says that ,”according to confessions by A.Q. Khan and his aides to Pakistani investigators, he reportedly implicated among others, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the commander of Pakistan's army from 1988-1991, and that any nuclear technology shared with Iran had been approved by him. These charges were denied by Beg. Nevertheless, there was evidence that Beg had been informed by Khan of the transfer to Iran in early 1991 of outdated hardware, though it has been claimed that A.Q. Khan had led him to believe that the material would not allow Iran to produce enriched uranium.

“A.Q. Khan has claimed that equipment and drawing shipped to Iran were supplied as a result of pressure from the late Gen. Imtiaz during his tenure as defense advisor to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto from December 1988 to August 1990. Khan also admitted to meeting Iranian scientists in Karachi at the request of Dr. Niazi, a close Bhutto aide. In return for the help, Iran transferred millions of dollars to foreign bank accounts, with some money funneled through the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which collapsed in 1991.

“Some of the centrifuges examined also appeared to have been used outside Iran to enrich uranium, while components of some centrifuges appeared to have come directly from Pakistan. Though some of the machines Iran had bought did not work properly, Iran reportedly still managed to effect significant improvements on Pakistani equipment designs. Despite the design similarities, Iran has nonetheless denied having received them from Pakistan.

“Faced with disclosure, Khan reportedly contacted Iranian officials to not only urge them to destroy some of their facilities but also to pretend that the Pakistanis who had assisted them had died. In early March 2005, Pakistan acknowledged A. Q. Khan had provided centrifuges to Iran, though it denied having had any knowledge of the transactions. “

Iran counters Western opposition;

In his statement at the UN General Assembly, the recently elected President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the West of "nuclear apartheid" and lambasted them as sponsors of state terrorism around the world. "Those hegemonic powers, who consider scientific and technological progress of independent and free nations as a challenge to their monopoly on these instruments of power ... have misrepresented Iran's healthy and fully safeguarded technological endeavors in the nuclear field as pursuit of nuclear weapons," he said. "This is nothing but a propaganda ploy."

Young, austere and ascetic Ahmadinejad is a product of the 1979 Khomeini revolution and not a Cleric like Khatami or bazzari (trader) like Rafsanjani, his predecessors and stuck to Iran’s right to process uranium fuel for its nuclear power reactors as permitted under non-proliferation treaty. He offered partnership to other countries in Iran's uranium enrichment program and sought to broaden the stalled E-3 talks with UK, France and Germany on Tehran's nuclear program. Iran "is prepared to engage in serious partnership with private and public sectors of other countries to implement uranium enrichment program in Iran. This represents the most far-reaching step ... being proposed by Iran." South Africa gave up its nuclear program after its independence after the peaceful collapse of the apartheid regime .Iran’s offer  was also aimed to attract others with any similar ambitions like Brazil, Argentina, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The last two, which had inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after its collapse, surrendered them.

Ahmadinejad said Iran would not accept "nuclear apartheid" that permitted some countries to enrich fuel, but not others. "We're not going to cave in to the excessive demands of certain powers," Ahmadinejad said later at a media conference. He correctly insisted the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, gave every signatory the right to produce nuclear fuel, an interpretation wrongly disputed by the West. He insisted that Iran's program was purely for peaceful civilian energy purposes and said Tehran would cooperate with the IAEA, although he hinted that, it would consider withdrawing from the NPT if the matter was sent to the Security Council.

He denied media reports that Iran would share nuclear technology with other Islamic countries, saying that his remarks were quoted out of context. He “thanked South Africa who could potentially be a negotiating partner," Ahmadinejad said, adding that Iran will not limit the cooperation to only some countries. In an interview with CNN, he did not rule out steps for an oil price rise if sanctions were imposed on Iran." Any intelligent, healthy, smart human being should use every resource in order to maintain his or her freedom and independence," he replied when asked about the oil weapon. Iran "has the means to defend and obtain its rights."

U.S. and EU officials were disappointed with a British Foreign Office spokesman saying: "This was an unhelpful speech on which we will now want to consult our partners on the IAEA board of governors." French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the option of reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council "remains on the agenda." A senior US State Department official privately briefed the media.”It's a very aggressive speech which would seem to cross the EU3 red line, especially in one very important regard with respect to enrichment."

Earlier addressing the UN, Condeleeza Rice, the US Secretary of State, demanded that Iran return to the negotiating table with the Europeans. "Questions about Iran's nuclear activities remain unanswered despite repeated efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency and after agreeing to negotiate with the European Union," she declared. "Iran should return to negotiations with the EU and abandon for ever its plans for a nuclear weapons capability."

The action has now shifted to Vienna, where a critical meeting of the board of the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, began on 19 September. While European diplomats in Vienna said the West had the support of at least 20 countries on the 35-member IAEA board, Russia, China, India and Pakistan were reluctant to send the dispute to UNSC.

Earlier on 18 September, Iran warned the board of IAEA that "Our advice to the agency is to review Iran's case tomorrow logically and realistically to avoid making the case more complicated," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference. "We haven't started (uranium) enrichment yet but everything depends on the result of tomorrow's meeting," he said.