Khan said Pakistan could have become a nuclear power as early as 1984 but the then President General Zia ul Haq 'opposed the move'.
AQ Khan, a controversial scientist known as the father of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear programme, passed away here on Sunday after a brief illness. He was 85.
The blast at the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) facility at Kahuta, near Islamabad, occurred when the technician was handling conventional explosives and there had been no damage to the nuclear facilities, said Army spokesman Shaukat Sultan.
It was prompted by the discovery that Pakistan may have been the source of crucial technology for Iran's secret nuclear programme.
Pakistan's Khan Research Laboratories, which was founded by nuclear scientist A Q Khan, had clandestinely supplied centrifuge components to a nuclear plant intended to be installed in Libya, a new book has claimed.
The sad part of the whole story was that, unlike China, India had no such serious security problems (it had a Friendship Treaty with the USSR) and that it violated a sacred trust by clandestinely using the Canadian reactor and American heavy water to make this weapon. Nothing damaged the NPT as much as the Indian nuclear explosion did, declares Dr A Q Khan
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