A Q Khan to undergo cancer surgery

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's disgraced nuclear hero, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is suffering from prostate cancer, would undergo surgery in the southern city of Karachi, the government said on Wednesday.       

"In consultation with his family and after deliberate discussion with the doctors, Dr A Q Khan has decided to undergo radical prostatectomy (surgery) at the Agha Khan Hospital in Karachi," a government statement said.      

Khan will be moving to Karachi "shortly for surgery and post operative care", it said.     

The government last month made the 70-year-old Khan's condition public, but said the disease was not at an advanced stage. Recent tests conducted on Khan by a team of specialist doctors revealed that the disease was "localised", the statement said.    

"It was ascertained by the doctors that cancer of the prostrate tumour has not affected other parts of the body and is localised. Ultrasound scan of the prostate repeated and reconfirmed that the tumour seems resectable (able to be removed)," it said.   

Khan -- who is at the centre of an international nuclear proliferation scandal involving North Korea, Libya and Iran -- is still revered as a hero in military-ruled Pakistan as the father of the Islamic world's first atomic bomb.             

In February 2004, he made a televised confession in which he admitted passing nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea, placing him in the thick of a global atomic black market.   

President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him the same month. But Khan has since lived under virtual house arrest in a leafy diplomatic sector in Islamabad and makes no public appearances.