ISLAMABAD (AP) — Abdul Qadeer Khan, a controversial figure known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, died Sunday of COVID-19 following a lengthy illness, his family said. Both are declared nuclear weapons states after they conducted tit-for-tat nuclear weapons tests in 1998. For 10 years during the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan, successive U.S. presidents certified Pakistan was not developing nuclear weapons. Pakistan was accused of selling nuclear weapons technology to North Korea in exchange for its No-Dong missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Prime Minister Imran Khan called him a “national icon,” whose nuclear weapons program “provided us security against an aggressive much larger nuclear neighbor.
