WASHINGTON, March 7 (UPI) -- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto says she personally brought blueprints from North Korea for her country's missile program.
In February 2004, when father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, media reports also suggested Pakistan had given nuclear technology to North Korea in return for the missiles it bought from the communist state.
Talking to a group of Pakistani journalists in Washington during the weekend, Bhutto said Pakistan paid "cash" for the blueprints.
But she said Pakistani authorities might have exchanged nuclear technology for missiles at a later time, after the United States and other world powers imposed strict economic sanctions on Islamabad following 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan. Bhutto's political rival, Nawaz Sharif, was then in power.
"It is quite possible that in 1998, when we were facing a financial crunch because of our nuclear tests, at that time this (exchange of nuclear technology for missiles) might have happened, but not by us."
