ISLAMABAD George Tenet, former chief of US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has disclosed the details of his secret meeting with President Pervez Musharraf. Tenet presents documentary evidence about AQ Khan's connections with North Korea.

Tenet narrates the dramatic details of his meeting with Musharraf in his autobiography, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA.

He met Musharraf on Sept. 24, 2003 in a New York hotel during the president's visit for attending a UN General Assembly meeting.

"It was a 'four eyes' meeting - just the two of us. No handlers, no note takers," writes Tenet, who paints a gloomy picture of the high-profile meeting that changed that entire spectrum of Pakistan's atomic programme.

That ultimately led to lifetime house arrest/detention of AQ Khan and the arrest of dozens of the other atomic scientists related to the Pakistan atomic programme. Musharraf already confessed in his autobiography In the Line of Fire about the smuggling of at least two dozen centrifuges to North Korea by Khan's Network.

Tenet admired Musharraf as a man of strong nerves. Tenet suddenly presented top-secret blueprints of Pakistani centrifuges to him. "Khan has stolen your nuclear weapons secrets. We know this, because, we stole them from him." Musharraf was totally composed and showed no reaction or emotions, although in his own book he declared that meeting the most embarrassing moment of his life.

Tenet wrote, "I informed Musharraf that AQ Khan is betraying your country. He has stolen some of your nation's most sensitive secrets and sold them to the highest bidders."

He sketched a picture of that moment in well-calculated words when he opened his briefcase then pulled out some blueprints and diagrams of nuclear designs of various centrifuges stolen from the atomic treasury of the government of Pakistan.

"I had been briefed well enough by my team that I could (easily) point out (technical) markings on the drawings that would prove that these designs were supposed to be in a vault in Islamabad, not a hotel room in New York," he added.

"I revealed those P-1 centrifuges were sold to Iran. Then AQ Khan produced design for the next-generation P-2 centrifuge. He has sold advanced P-2 centrifuges to several countries,' I continued my assertions without pause." Then he shocked Musharraf by presenting another document. "These are the drawings of a uranium processing plant that he (Dr Khan) sold to Libya."

"I always found him to be a cool customer, someone who seems to be taking in every word you are saying," Tenet wrote of the general.

"Mr President, if a country like Libya or Iran or, God forbid, an organisation like Al Qaeda, gets a working nuclear device and the world learns that it came from your country, I am afraid the consequences would be devastating."

Tenet narrates that he suggested a few steps the US and Pakistan could take jointly to find out the full extent of Khan's "corruption" and to put and end it once and for all.

Musharraf asked a few more questions for clarification and then simply said, "Thank you, George.

I will take care of this." Musharraf wrote in his autobiography that when the Americans confronted him with the blueprints and the some technical diagrams, he instantly recognised that these were the design details of Pakistan's top secret atomic centrifuges.

The president clearly admitted that Khan provided material and technical support to North Korea and several other countries for nuclear proliferation.

He confessed in his biography that Khan smuggled at least two dozen centrifuges and related spare parts and equipment illegally.

Internews