Musharraf stopped funds for Pak missile, asking AQ Khan: "You want to destroy Israel?"

Lahore, May 28(ANI): Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf had stopped the funding for Pakistan's Ghauri-III missile over security concerns about Israel, according to a compilation of handwritten memoirs of disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Columnist Abdul Jabbar Mirza has compiled the 216-page book 'Araaza' containing the brief history of Dr AQ Khan's family and his concise biography from his childhood to the present day.

Dr AQ Khan's differences with former dictator Musharraf have also been documented in the book, The News reports.

He has mentioned that on the occasion of the test flight of Ghauri-I ballistic missile on April 6, 1998 with a range of 1,500 kilometres, General Musharraf had been invited as corps commander of Mangla, but that he was not in his senses.

Dr AQ Khan said that his differences with Musharraf started when he told him: "We are reciting Quranic verses, Haj is being performed in Makkah and in which state you have come here."

Differences continued to persist between the scientist and Musharraf, who later became the chief executive of the country.

Dr AQ Khan recalled that 50 per cent work had been completed on Ghauri-III in May 2000, when Musharraf stopped the funding, saying: "You want to destroy Israel?"

In January 2004, Musharraf started the debriefing of the nuclear scientist, and forced him to read a confessional statement in February 2004, the report said.

Later, a C-130 plane was readied to hand over Dr AQ Khan to the United States, but at the eleventh hour, the then Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali refused to sign the exit, saving the scientist.

But differences of Jamali with Musharraf started following this incident, and because of the same differences and at the behest of the US, Jamali was later removed as prime minister on June 26, 2004, the report said.

Dr AQ Khan also said that he had predicted that Musharraf, who was the then Pakistan Army chief, would topple the government of Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif. (ANI)