city. It was there that Bhutto orchestrated, administered, and led the scientific research on nuclear weapons as he announced the official nuclear weapons development programme. In 1972, Pakistan's core intelligence service, the ISI, secretly learned that India was close to developing an atomic bomb, under its nuclear programme. Partially in response, defence expenditure and funding of science under then-Prime Minister Bhutto increased by 200%. In the initial years, Abdus Salam, a Nobel laureate, headed the nuclear weapons program as he was the prime minister's science adviser. He is also credited with recruiting hundreds of Pakistani scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to the nuclear weapons development program; he later formed and headed the Theoretical Physics Group (TPG), the special weapons division of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) that developed the designs of the nuclear weapons. Throughout that time, the foundations were laid down to develop a military nuclear capability. This included the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear weapons design, development and testing programme. The fuel cycle program included the uranium exploration, mining, refining, conversion and Uranium Hexafluoride (UF6) production, enrichment and fuel fabrication and reprocessing facilities. These facilities were established in PAEC by Munir Ahmad Khan. He was appointed PAEC Chairman on January 20, 1972 at the Multan Conference of senior scientists and engineers. Earlier, Munir Ahmad Khan was serving as Director of Nuclear Power and Reactors Division, IAEA. He was credited as the "technical father" of Pakistan's atom project by a recent International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, (IISS) dossier on history of the Pakistan's nuclear development, with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the father of Pakistan's nuclear developmental programme. Munir Ahmad Khan, an expert in Plutonium technology, had also laid the foundation and groundbreaking work for the Plutonium reprocessing technology. Khan, built the New Laboratories, a plutonium reprocessing plant located in Islamabad. After Chief Martial Law Administrator (later president) and Chief of Army Staff General Zia-ul-Haq came to power (see Operation Fair Play), further advancements were made to enrich uranium and consolidate the nuclear development programme. On March 11, 1983, the PAEC under Munir Ahmad Khan carried out the first successful cold test of a working nuclear device near at the Kirana Hills under codename Kirana-I. The test was led by CERN-physicist Ishfaq Ahmad, and was witnessed by other senior scientists belonging to Pakistan Armed Forces and the PAEC. To compound matters further, the Soviet Union had withdrawn from Afghanistan