[4][5] Project-706 refers specifically to the period from 1974 to 1983 when it was under the control of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and later on under the military administration of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

Scientists and military officers who participated in the Project were given leadership positions in their respective services, and conferred with high civil decorations by the Government of Pakistan.

The history of Pakistani interest into nuclear science goes back to late 1948 when a large number of scientists, mathematicians, chemists, and physicists moved to Pakistan from India on the request of Prime minister Liaqat Ali Khan.

[8] In 1956, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) was founded and its first chairman was Nazir Ahmad, and Science Advisor to the Prime minister, Salimuzzaman Siddiqui served agency's first Technical (member).

Usmani played a pivotal role in the construction and development of Karachi Nuclear Power Plant by setting up uranium and plutonium exploration committees throughout the country.

[15] In 1967, a team of Pakistani scientists, under Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry, produced the first batch of radioisotopes at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology.

Pakistan lost half its Navy, a quarter of its Air Force and a third of its Army as well as losing millions of citizens to newly created Bangladesh.

Bhutto called Munir Ahmad Khan from Vienna and immediately removed Ishrat Hussain Usmani as the chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

[21] Theoretical physicists at Institute of Physics (IP) of Quaid-e-Azam University began to report back to Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

[25] Educated at the Argonne National Laboratory,[26] Munir Ahmad Khan and Abdus Salam called a meeting to initiate a work on an atomic weapon in March 1974 at the Pinstech Institute.

[30] In March 1974, a meeting led by Abdus Salam and Munir Ahmad Khan constituted a small directorate, code name Wah Group Scientists (WGS).

Its members contained Hafeez Qureshi, director-general of Radiation Isotope Application Division (RIAD), and Zaman Sheikh, a chemical engineer from DESTO.

The Nuclear Engineering Division, under Bashiruddin Mahmood set up a 238U production facility and the construction began under Munir Ahmad Khan's direction.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, a German-trained metallurgical engineer and nuclear weapon technologist, had spent years at URENCO in Belgium and the Netherlands.

[34] After the India's nuclear test, Khan wrote a letter to Bhutto in which he explained that he had gained expertise in centrifuge-based uranium enrichment technologies at URENCO in Belgium.

As a two-star general, Zahid Ali Akbar Khan led the constructions of both the Metallurgical Laboratory in Wah Canntonment (ML) and the uranium enrichment plant in Kahuta.

There are inconsistencies in the above account, which suggests that Brigadier Zahid Ali Akbar Khan was promoted to the rank of two star general by Gen Tikka on the orders of Bhutto to sway the scientists.

[37][38][39][40][41] Qadeer Khan had brought with him knowledge of gas centrifuge technologies that he had learned through his position at the classified URENCO uranium enrichment plant in the Netherlands.

[48] The locations of nuclear sites were more secure than the Prime Minister Secretariat, as the Government of Pakistan was aware of the United States, Soviet Union, and other foreign intelligence agencies had a strong interest.

According to Brigadier Imtiaz Ahmad, United States had ground intelligence and the ISI had apparently arrested a number of Soviet and American spies in 1976.

[49] The operation concluded with the arrest and life imprisonment of a supposed Pakistani CIA agent, Rafiq Safi Munshi, who it was alleged had been working as a nuclear engineer at KANUPP, and as such had tried to wire classified atomic documents to the American consulate in Karachi.

[57] All of these methods were developed and supervised under Shaukat Hameed Khan of the Laser Physics Group (LPG) and Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood of the Nuclear Engineering Division (NED).

[citation needed] However, the PAEC did not completely abandon the work on MLIS method; instead it was continued for the research purposes only under Shaukat Hameed Khan.

Tasneem Shah gained fame when he independently analysed the issue, and assisted the KRL scientists to develop a powerful version of the centrifuges.

The climax and the main focus of Project-706 was to build the Kahuta facility as well as the atomic bomb by using the centrifugal technology that was developed by the Qadeer Khan from his experience at URENCO GROUP.

[citation needed] After the dismissal of the Bhutto Government, Lieutenant-General Zahid Ali Akbar became in charge of the Project, supervising both PAEC and KRL research developmental work.

[62] The breakthrough with plutonium experiment was at the PINSTECH Laboratory by Iqbal Hussain Qureshi of NCD and Ishfaq Ahmad of Nuclear Physics Group (NPG).

The experiments also showed theoretically feasible grounds that element 94 would be readily fissionable by both slow and fast neutrons, and had the added advantage of being chemically different from uranium, and could easily be separated from it.

[citation needed] In March 1983, only senior scientists and high civil and military officials were invited to witness the cold test of a working nuclear device.

By the time Libya had joined the research, Bhutto was hanged after a military coup d'état by Chief of Army Staff Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.