- WASHINGTON (AP) -- A week after a Pakistani man came forward with claims
to secret knowledge about a possible nuclear strike against India, his
story is raising increasing doubts.
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- Iftikhar Khan Chaudhary, who asked U.S.
authorities for political asylum,has been disavowed by his own father and
now by a Pakistani physicist at Princeton University, Zia Mian.
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- "It was like 'Alice in Wonderland,'
" Mian said Tuesday of an hour-long interview with Khan. "It
had no connection to reality."
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- Somewhat more diplomatically, State Department
spokesman James P. Rubin said there were "significant discrepancies"
in the story Khan told U.S. government officials.
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- Khan, who claimed to be a nuclear scientist,
said last week he had fled to the United States in search of political
asylum to protest Pakistan's alleged plans to carry out a preemptive nuclear
strike.
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- Mian debunked the notion that Khan had
received extensive training in the nuclear field, saying Khan's account
of his education was inconsistent with university requirements in Pakistan.
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- Khan claimed to have earned a medical
degree, then decided to work as a nuclear plant technician even though
he could have earned more as a doctor. He said he earned a master's degree
in physics in 1995 from Karachi University.
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- Asked about his time in the physics department,
whose instructors are all known to Mian, Khan apparently made up names
of his professors, Mian said.
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- "He couldn't name anybody who was
there. He couldn't name any of the courses that he took. He couldn't even
locate the physics buildings" on the campus, Mian said. Khan's father
told Pakistani television last week that his son studied business, not
nuclear science.
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- Mian said Khan's English was so poor
that early in the interview the conversation was switched to Urdu. Joining
in the interview was A.H. Nayyar, a Pakistani physicist who is doing research
this summer at Princeton.
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- "His English should have been fairly
fluent," Mian said, as all graduate-level science instruction in Pakistan
is in English, because most of the world's technical literature is in English.
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- Khan claimed to have studied physics
in his native Urdu, which the two Pakistani professors considered impossible.
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- When they asked Khan about his supposed
employment at a Karachi nuclear power station, Khan did not know what fuel
was used for the reactor, Mian said. "Considering that he (supposedly)
worked there for five years and had a master's degree in physics and had
studied atomic physics, he should have known what the fuel was," he
said.
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- Khan was unavailable for comment Tuesday
but he talked with a Washington Post reporter about his conversation with
the Princeton professors.
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- Khan told the Post he has been "very
tense" and didn't remember enough about his physics courses to be
able to respond to the questions posed by the professors.
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- Mian also criticized the media for reporting
Khan's claims without checking his background at a time when "these
kinds of inflammatory stories" could have worsened tensions between
Pakistan and India.
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- "I think it was shockingly irresponsible
to have done this," he said.
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- Immigration Service spokesman Russ Bergeron
said that if the claims of a person seeking political asylum are found
not to be credible, he could be subject to deportation if he has no legal
status for remaining in the United States.
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