After U.S. and British intelligence services confronted Musharraf with the evidence of an international mail-order business for nuclear weapons secrets run by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb made a full confession on national television. But A.Q., as the country's most popular man is known, was allowed to keep all his assets, including lavish homes in Pakistan and Dubai. Libya alone paid $100 million for Pakistan's nuclear know-how.

A.Q. Khan is a religious fundamentalist with a penchant for the good life. As a national icon, he shares co-equal status with Jinnah, Pakistan's founder. The secret meeting to promote Dr. Khan as Musharraf's successor took place in Akora Khattak upon the death of the wife of Senator Sami ul-Haq, Vice President of MMA, a coalition of six politico-religious parties, said one of the politicians present who requested his name be withheld.

The mastermind promoting A.Q. Khan's candidacy was his close friend Gen. Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency who is "strategic adviser" to MMA. Gul and most of the country's politico-religious leaders journeyed to Khattak to present their condolences to Sami ul-Haq. Sami is also the President of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, an extremist party, and Chancellor of the University for the Education of Truth. The University, where nine out of Taliban's top 10 leaders were educated, is located in Khattak where the secret meetings took place in late February.

Gen. Gul, according to one of the participants, explained how he was assembling "a strong team of faithful Muslims to take control of the country to serve the nation and the Muslim world with true Islamic spirit." Gul then added, "A.Q. is our natural leader."

The UPI informant strongly doubts ISI reported this meeting to Musharraf "though they must have known about it as the University is where ISI recruited some of its best agents when Pakistan was helping its Taliban ally in Afghanistan." The University at Khattak, 45 kilometers from Peshawar, has a student body of 2,800 from some 20 Muslim countries.

Hamid Gul frequently expresses strong anti-American views in Pakistani newspapers. He has accused Musharraf of "selling out" to the United States and "betraying" Pakistan's national interest. The MMA coalition has denounced Musharraf's orders to the Pakistani army to collaborate with the U.S. in the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

On a one-day stop in Islamabad Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would be asking Congress to declare Pakistan "a major non-NATO ally." This new status would lift restrictions on U.S. arms sales and allow for closer military cooperation between the two countries.

The Pakistani military has kept out of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that straddle the Pak-Afghan since independence half a century ago. Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf ordered troops into FATA two years ago to try to block mountain passes that were being used as escape routes for Al Qaeda and Taliban units following the battle of Tora Bora. Osama Bin Laden was reliably reported to have made it through one of the gaps in the Pakistani deployment. Since then, Musharraf has increased the number of troops along the jagged mountain range that separate the two countries to about 70,000.

The "major non-NATO ally" category puts Pakistan in the same group of elite nations that include Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, South Korea, the Philippines and Argentina. These nations qualify for the stockpiling of U.S. military hardware and benefit from U.S. government loan guarantee programs. But Pakistan's new status, if it is approved by Congress, does not give Pakistan the mutual defense guarantees enjoyed by NATO allies.

U.S. and Pakistani military forces have worked closely along 1,000 miles of jagged mountains and deep, narrow ravines where the border is unmarked. U.S. helicopters occasionally operate on the Pakistani side of the tribal areas. Heavy fighting between suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda pockets caused some 50 killed, including a score of Pakistani soldiers. Late Thursday, a group of several hundred guerrillas that was believed to include Ayman Al Zawahiri, Bin Laden's no. 2, had held off Pakistani troops until sundown.

U.S. gunships and fighter bombers were standing by at the Bagram air base near Kabul. They were expected to be called in at first light Friday.

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