Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan. ROBERT NICKELSBERG FOR TIME

TIME: And yet in Kashmir, both sides are shooting at each other across the border every day.
Khan: You can lob a few shells from this side and few shells from that side. You can kill a few people, and they can kill a few people. O.K. There is a war of liberation going on. People do not like Indian occupation in Kashmir, and our sympathies are with them. But I do not think that India and Pakistan would go to war over Kashmir.

TIME: India and Pakistan, both poor countries, have been criticized for spending too much money on weapons.
Khan: It does not cost much. We have learned from other countries, so we do not have to reinvent the wheel. The money that I need for my program is less than the cost of a modern aircraft. You need more brains than money.

TIME: Did Pakistan and India exaggerate the size of their nuclear blasts?
Khan: We keep some cats in the bag. It does not matter how many. We had to demonstrate that we could manufacture and explode a nuclear device.

TIME: The Indians say they built a bomb using their own technology and the Pakistanis borrowed or bought theirs.
Khan: The Indians are big liars. They got these things from abroad just as we did. Nowadays, it is a global industry. If you stop me from buying for Pakistan, then I will buy it through somebody else. But I will buy it because I need it.

TIME: Indians and Pakistanis come from the same land, speak the same language. Yet they have been fighting for years.
Khan: There are some similarities, but we are basically different. We are Muslims, they are Hindus. We eat cows. They worship cows. That we lived on the same land and spoke the same language does not make us the same people.

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