LAHORE - Information Minister Punjab Fayyazul Hassan Chohan has lambasted Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for claiming false credit for making Pakistan a nuclear-have Muslim state through nuclear tests Chagi-I and Chagi-II of May 28, 1998.
In a statement issued here on Thursday, he said the credit for country’s nuclear capability was due to former Prime Minister Zulifqar Ali Bhutto, General Ziaul Haq, Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, adding that Nawaz Sharif and PML-N cannot lay claim to giving Pakistan nuclear status.
The nuclear capability was a fruit of economic hardships faced by the nation during the 1980s to attain nuclear capability, adding that the Sharifs paid mere 200 to 500 tax during this time and how could these looters of national wealth could claim to have contributed to the making of the atomic bomb. Chohan claimed that Nawaz Sharif was against nuclear tests and did his best to persuade civil and military establishment in the country on the financial benefits of not going nuclear, adding that the fact has been admitted by former foreign minister Gohar Ayub and Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan in their books and interviews.
“The nation could attribute the nuclear capability to the PML-N, if the nuclear bomb had been developed in the Ittefaq Foundary of the Sharifs”, he said, adding that the PML-N leadership lived in a fool’s paradise to lay claims to the acquisition of the nuclear capability. Fayyazul Hassan Chohan said the PML-N leadership should be ashamed of its false claims of making Pakistan’s defense impregnable through nuclear tests.