By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 2, 1998; Page A23

NEW YORK, July 1—A Pakistani nuclear weapons engineer seeking political asylum in the United States said today that his country's top military and intelligence officials were so concerned about the possibility that India would launch a nuclear attack in April that they discussed plans for a preemptive nuclear strike on New Delhi.

The account of Iftikhar Khan Chaudry, a 27-year-old former nuclear research officer, raises new questions about the nuclear brinksmanship between Pakistan and India, especially in the last two months. On May 11 the Hindu nationalist government in India conducted the first of five nuclear tests, and the Muslim government in Pakistan responded with six underground nuclear explosions, its first, on May 28 and 31.

Khan said in an interview that the nuclear facility where he worked had enough enriched U-235 uranium material to make 12 to 18 bombs. He also detailed the assistance China has given in developing Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and the training they both gave to Iranian scientists on atomic weapons work.

Pakistani government officials strongly denied Khan's assertions, and insisted that the man who claims to be Khan is a fraud. Ahmad Kamal, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations, said that a man by the name of Iftikhar Khan was a low-level nuclear functionary in 1980, when this man was 9 years old.

"We've had no defections or disappearances of any Pakistani scientists," said Kamal, who added that a government identity card that Khan showed reporters today is "a complete fabrication. . . . This whole thing makes no sense."

But Pakistani government sources confirmed today that Khan did in fact hold the position that he claimed to have had until he left in late April, when he says he was fired in a dispute with superiors. He said he later slipped out of the country and made his way to New York, where he met today with reporters in his lawyer's office. The attorney, Michael Wildes, is negotiating with U.S. officials to secure him a visa.

Khan, a small man with a quiet voice and a trim mustache, said that he had growing doubts about his country's nuclear weapons program since the day he joined the government effort in 1992.

But he said he became convinced after a meeting of top government officials that he attended on April 25 that sooner or later India and Pakistan will have a nuclear exchange.

"I foresee there will be a nuclear war, destroying both our countries," Khan said today. "The people of Pakistan don't know these weapons can destroy them too."

Khan, who said he worked at a nuclear weapons center in the city of Khushab, where centrifuges converted uranium into a form usable in warheads, said that the April 25 meeting near his plant was called in an atmosphere of great tension.

Convinced India was about to attack, the Pakistani government had weeks earlier tested its intermediate-range ballistic Ghauri missile for the first time. Kahn said that Pakistani intelligence had reported that an Israeli reconnaissance aircraft was hovering on the Indian-Pakistani border, which they believed was spying on Pakistan for the Indians. Pakistani government officials had for years feared that Israel, whom they are convinced has helped the Indian nuclear weapons program, would bomb Pakistan on India's behalf and to stop work on an "Islamic bomb."

At the meeting at a government estate in Khushab, he said, were Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan; A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program; top intelligence and military officials; and a representative of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The session was chaired by the nation's top military officer, Gen. Jahangir Karamat. Iftikhar Khan said he was present as a deputy to Altaf Hussein, a key aide to A.Q. Khan.

The group discussed intelligence data that they said indicated beyond a doubt that India was on the verge of attack, he said. "They had a strong impression the Indians would make a first strike," Khan said. "We wouldn't be in a position to counterattack, so [the decision was] let's strike first."

Pending the prime minister's approval, Karamat approved a plan to strike New Delhi and some Indian nuclear sites using Ghauri missiles placed along the border with India, Kahn said.

Distraught and frightened, he said, he approached four colleagues who had expressed doubts about the Pakistani atomic effort. Together they signed a letter to Altaf Hussein recalling that meeting and stating, according to a copy of the letter he produced today: "Usage of nuclear weapons and atomic bombs is very, very dangerous and destructive to the human being. . . . I believe it is my moral duty to make efforts as I can so to avoid the usage of nuclear weapons. . . . In case of no change of decision, we will go to public."

His boss, Hussein, threatened him after reading the letter, Khan said. Khan was fired, and soon began receiving threats from security officials, he said. "If you go forward, we're going to kill you and your children," said one.

He said that he went into hiding in a small town near his home, and quietly arranged for a visa from the Canadian embassy. During this time, his wife was detained by security officials and is still being held, he said. With help from a friend in the Pakistani security service, he flew to Dubai, then to Frankfurt and Montreal.

Khan said the letter's four other signatories also have left Pakistan, and one is reported to be in London.

Wildes, an immigration lawyer, said Kahn had spoken to the FBI and had asked for a U.S. visa and American help in protecting his wife in exchange for information about Pakistani nuclear weapons. Wildes said the talks have stalled because the FBI wants to learn more of what he knows before considering the offer.

"We urge the U.S. government to protect this brave man on our soil," said Wildes, who asserts that some of Khan's information -- about the location of uranium reprocessing facilities, and work on nuclear warheads to be launched from cannons -- may be new to U.S. intelligence agencies.

But Ambassador Kamal, for one, tried to cast doubt on such assertions, pointing to the numerous grammatical and spelling errors in Khan's letter to Hussein. "This man is a con artist," he said.

Staff writer Thomas W. Lippman in Washington and special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.