Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003

[Rangudu]

Nukes Endanger Asia's Future

Who sold Iran the centrifuges? Several reports have pointed the finger at Pakistan. Islamabad denies any link to Iran's nuclear program. It claims that freelance scientists from the former Soviet Union assisted the Iranians. But U.S. intelligence sources and even official Pakistani statements have suggested that Pakistan has not always adhered to its commitment to not share its nuclear know-how.

Despite its denials, Islamabad reportedly swapped nuclear technology with North Korea, which helped Pakistan develop its ballistic missile program. Because Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, Washington has tended to overlook Islamabad's possible nuclear misconduct. It's worth remembering that Pakistan was able to develop a nuclear program because Washington wanted to use the country as a staging ground for the moujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But we can't continue to ignore nuclear proliferation out of fear that allies will be offended or upset. Each nation in the new nuclear arc represents serious policy problems for the United States. Iran's clerical regime has consistently sought preeminence in the world of Islam, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia. Pakistan remains an unstable state and spawning ground for terrorists. Its confrontation with India has led to three wars and several military stand-offs.

Here's what the Bush administration needs to do:

• Free up its diplomatic resources to focus on the coming nuclear crisis. It cannot let disputes over Iraq split the U.S. from its allies and monopolize high-level attention.

• Convince Iran that its future would be far better without nuclear weapons. This should include efforts to forge a new, more positive relationship with Tehran. Sanctions without continued engagement failed to deter Pakistan and India from becoming nuclear powers and may prove to be of equally limited value against Iran. In interviews with U.S. journalists last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi offered to work with Washington on a range of issues, including Iran's nuclear activities. The administration should aggressively pursue his offer.

• Consider Pakistan not just as an ally in the war on terrorism but also as a serious problem in the struggle to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Anti-terror concerns should not trump antinuclear ones. The U.S. should help Pakistan overcome its security anxieties about India. But it should not allow Pakistan's military leaders to feel they are free to resist democracy and develop their nuclear arsenal as long as they chase down members of Al Qaeda.

[Rangudu]

From Nuclear Fuel.No URL.

Iran to face pressure on procurement sources

Mark Hibbs, Bonn

Nuclear Fuel Volume 28, No. 18

1 September 2003

Key conclusions in the IAEA's second report on Iran's nuclear activities to the board of governors, finished early last week, will increase the pressure on Iran to disclose foreign procurement information for its nuclear program, Western government officials said. The board will convene in Vienna beginning Sept. 8.

The 10-page report is longer than the first report compiled in June, and contains 53 paragraphs enumerating unanswered questions and apparent contradictions in Iran's explanations to the IAEA thus far.

Just before the report was drafted, IAEA officials returned from Iran, where they had been told the country's enrichment program began far earlier than Iran had previously admitted. Until then, Iran had claimed its uranium enrichment program was started up only a few years ago. The new admission forced the IAEA to substantially revise its history (Nucleonics Week, 21 Aug., 1). The report specifies that Iran's program began 12 years earlier than previously believed.

The report confirms statements by Vienna officials last month (NF, 14 July, Special) that the centrifuge was derived from an early vintage supercritical Urenco centrifuge. The IAEA report says the design basis of the Iranian centrifuge is ``recognized as an early European design.''

That finding, coupled with Iran's admission that its centrifuge plan was born in the 1980s, not later, will increase suspicion that it relied on assistance from Pakistan, officials said. Western intelligence sources nine months ago told NuclearFuel that the U.S. government had reached that conclusion by the early 1990s (NF, 3 Feb., 1).

The report to the board does not, however, mention Pakistan as a suspected source for the Iranian program, and both Pakistan and Iran continue to deny that Pakistan provided any aid. Iran told the IAEA last month that the enrichment project had no official foreign government aid of any kind.

On Aug. 6 Pakistan, in the most detailed statement it has made to date, denied flatly that it provided any centrifuge aid to Iran. It also claimed that its own centrifuge program was based not on stolen design data from Urenco but on generic centrifuge design data from the U.S. government.

``Any similarity in the shape of the centrifuges (in Iran and Pakistan) is due to the fact that they are all based on the Zippe design,'' the statement from the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said. Gernot Zippe is an Austrian engineer who pioneered the magnetic bearing centrifuge after World War II.

Zippe, the statement said, ``was commissioned by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to write a comprehensive technical report on enrichment centrifuge technology and on the detailed design of centrifuge machines. The Zippe report published in 1960 under AEC Contract R.No. EP. 4120-101-60U became the basis of all subsequent and current work in this field.''

The report said, ``The only barriers that then existed in 1960 toward operationalizing centrifuge enrichment plants and projects were imposed by the then state of materials technology. These constraints were overcome over a period of time with the development of high strength material able to withstand the necessary technical requirements.''

Western officials took issue with the statement. They said that materials developments alluded to by Pakistan were accompanied by significant engineering breakthroughs in Urenco designs, and it was these which were stolen by Pakistan in the 1970s, when Pakistan began its program. These developments went far beyond what Zippe had outlined in the U.S. 15 years before, they said. The stolen data included designs for bellows, scoops, baffles, and bearings that were specific to CNOR, SNOR, G-1, and G-2 design centrifuges that Urenco developed based, in part, on Zippe's original work.

After some experimentation with the first three types, the G-2 became the centerpiece of Pakistan's enrichment program. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistan scientist who took charge of its centrifuge effort after returning from a Dutch laboratory in 1976, was convicted of having stolen the technology by a Netherlands court but the conviction was overturned on technical legal grounds.

Communications written after IAEA inspectors examined Iran's centrifuges at Natanz referred to the centrifuges there as ``Urenco-derived,'' not generic Zippe models, officials said.

Confirmation by last week's IAEA report that environmental samples taken on cold traps and other equipment at Natanz indicated the presence of high-enriched uranium (HEU) (NF, 4 Aug., 1) may also force Iran's hand in explaining the foreign sources of its program.

Iran has told the IAEA that the HEU traces are due to contamination on equipment that had been imported. While Iran claims it will demonstrate to the IAEA that this is the case (NW, 28 Aug., 9), so far, one Vienna official said, Iran has asserted that the contaminated equipment was provided by a middleman years ago and that its country of origin--presumably an HEU producer--cannot be identified. But the IAEA is now preparing to ``find out the origin of every piece of centrifuge equipment in the entire program'' in Iran, he said.

Gary Samore, director of studies at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, said he was ``very confident'' that a rigorous examination of the history of the Iranian enrichment program would uncover help from Pakistan. He said ``it may therefore be significant'' that the IAEA now believes the program got started much earlier than the mid-1990s.

Documents from the IAEA investigation of Iraq's enrichment program indicated that in 1990, Pakistan's intelligence service ISI had offered to its counterpart in Iraq, the Mukhabarat, assistance in enriching uranium.

The IAEA will, however, proceed with caution in exploring suspected links between the Iranian program and Pakistan or any other government, Western officials said last week. One said it might be necessary to obtain samples from nuclear facilities in order to establish the origin of imported equipment, which would require the cooperation of governments that, like Pakistan's, have denied any assistance was provided. The IAEA's plan for interacting with Islamabad ``must be watertight'' before it is implemented, he said.

These officials reiterated last week that confidential cables at the time the first Natanz samples were taken had suggested that top-level IAEA personnel, including Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, go there to investigate. Officials said last week that, if a mission is organized to Pakistan, it would likely be staffed by forensic experts but that ElBaradei wouldn't be on it.

[Prateek]

Paki foot / finger prints every where ...

How North Korea Got the Bomb

How North Korea Got the Bomb

After 50 years of research, and much outside scientific help, Pyongyang may be close to detonating a nuke

By George Wehrfritz and Richard Wolffe
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL

Oct. 27 issue — Few North Koreans have suffered more directly for Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions than Kimchaek University’s class of ’62. Shortly before graduation day, the campus began buzzing with news that atomic scientists were needed for a new research lab being built for the “Great Leader,” Kim Il Sung. “Our professors really pushed the need for nuclear development,” recalls one class member who escaped the country two years ago and recently told NEWSWEEK his story. “The rumor circulating among students was that those of us sent there wouldn’t have long to live.”

THE DEFECTOR CAN’T be sure how many of his friends died young. He was lucky enough to be assigned elsewhere after college. As years passed, though, he kept running into former classmates who were wasting away from radiation sickness. “It was exactly what we feared,” the defector says. “Many of them lost their eyebrows. Some of them had constant nosebleeds. They looked so weak it was hard to even face them.” He blames the government’s disregard for human lives: “The thinking was, ‘If one scientist falls, there will always be others to take his place’.” That merciless logic ravaged not only a generation of North Korean physicists but the entire country, consuming billions of dollars that might otherwise have built a functioning economy capable of feeding its citizens. The program itself, however, succeeded: by most accounts, Kim’s son and successor, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il, is only a button’s click away from detonating a nuclear weapon.
Kim’s bomb is one of the most urgent problems facing the Bush administration—and Pyongyang clearly likes the notoriety. “There has been debate recently in the international community on whether [North Korea] has a nuclear deterrent,” the regime warned last week, just before President George W. Bush set off on his six-day trip to Asia. “When the time comes, we will take action to physically display [our] nuclear deterrent. At that point, such a debate will no longer be necessary.” But the threat goes far beyond North Korea’s crude efforts to extort aid and concessions from its neighbors and the Americans. The success of Kim’s nuclear program is proof that even the most abject poverty, backwardness and isolation cannot stop a truly determined regime from building a bomb. “If they squeeze their economy hard enough,” says Daniel Pinkston, a proliferation specialist at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, “any country with a population of 20 to 25 million will have the core group of people who can do it.”
How did Pyongyang get the bomb? In reply to that question, a senior South Korean military official pulls a cell phone from his shirt pocket. “This is a metaphor for North Korea’s program,” he says. “A few parts from here, a battery from there, and it could work even if the antenna malfunctions.” Starting in the 1950s, the North’s scientists are said to have gleaned vital components, raw material and information from more than a dozen countries on four continents. They even managed to swipe useful data from the files of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. And yet hardly anyone in the world was ever willing to trust the regime with nuclear weapons—not even the Great Leader’s best friends in Moscow and Beijing.
All the same, Western intelligence experts are convinced that Pyongyang is not bluffing. On Oct. 3, the regime announced that it had finished turning its stock of 8,017 uranium fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium, enough to build as many as six bombs. There’s no doubt that the North has been extracting bomb fuel. In June, strategically placed sensors began detecting traces of the telltale isotope krypton-85, a byproduct of the extraction process, in North Korea’s air. The only question is whether the job is done: national-security experts in Seoul believe that Pyongyang has used special “carbon bed” filters to cut its krypton emissions—and hence keep the West guessing about how much fissile material it has.
All that’s left to do is assemble the pieces. And perhaps to load them aboard a ballistic missile or a less conventional delivery system, like a shipping container or minisub. Maybe even sell one to terrorists, if the price is right. “North Korea has the capability of producing three to five basic-level nuclear bombs at this moment,” says Kim Tae Hyo of the South Korean government’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. “They already have a transportation mechanism to carry those bombs over to Honolulu and Alaska.” That would be the Taepodong I missile, with a 2,500-kilometer range.
There are hints that the regime might actually be understating its capabilities. The North reportedly conducted high-intensity explosive tests in the late 1990s—the meticulously calibrated kind of detonations that are required to set off an atomic bomb. “These are the tests you would need to conduct to know that you had a working system,” says one Western diplomat in Seoul. Even before the Northerners began reprocessing their spent fuel rods about six months ago, they were believed to have the makings of at least one bomb. “The considered judgment was that they certainly extracted enough material for one or two and probably three or four weapons,” the diplomat says. “If you straight-line out the developments over a period of time, by now they should have been able to develop basic working nuclear devices.” It sounds plausible when you consider the pace of other developing nations’ nuclear programs—as in Pakistan, which appears to have shared nuclear expertise with North Korea.
The origins of Pyongyang’s nuclear program are a study in unintended consequences. The first push came not from China or the Soviet Union but from the Japanese Empire. Back when the peninsula was a colonial possession, many of its brightest young scientists studied in Japan. They would become the core of North Korea’s scientific elite in the 1950s, when basic nuclear research started. The late scientist and inventor Lee Sung Ki, called the “first father” of North Korea’s nuclear program, earned a degree in chemical engineering at Kyoto Imperial University.
After World War II, Japan left behind uranium mining and milling operations in the mountains of northern Korea—the remains of its own secret nuclear program. The Koreans quickly put that equipment to use, exporting uranium to the Soviet Union. “In a way, it was the export of uranium that financed the military buildup that allowed the North to invade the South in 1950,” says former Russian diplomat Alexandre Y. Mansourov, a North Korea specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. “That’s how North Korea paid for the weapons and grain they got [leading up to the Korean War].”
America inadvertently gave Pyongyang the next boost. In Seoul, the fledgling government of Syngman Rhee undertook a U.S.-designed plan to reorganize the South’s education system. Opponents denounced the move as a ploy to get rid of leftist professors, and they warned it would only weaken the country’s already feeble science curriculum. Yet the plan went ahead, and Seoul National University alone lost 38 scientists and engineers—among them the eventual brains of North Korea’s nuclear-power program.
The best jobs most of those professors could find were miserable instructorships at small vocational schools. Pyongyang sent recruiters to talk to them. The pitch wasn’t at all ideological, says Kim Geun Bae, an intellectual historian at Chonbuk University in Chonju. Instead, the recruiters promised only that the North would fund the sciences. “By the time the Korean War ended,” Kim says, “about 80 scientists, or roughly 40 percent of all science graduates in the South, had defected to the North.”
As long as they avoided trouble with the North’s totalitarian government, the professors had a world of new scientific opportunities. In 1956, Moscow invited them to the newly established United Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna. In all, some 250 scientists from the North worked and studied there, according to former Izvestiya journalist Aleksandr Zhebin. Later, back in North Korea, a team of Soviet experts helped the cadre of Korean scientists build an experimental 2-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon that went online in 1965 and jump-started North Korea’s nuclear research.
The Russians called it Object 9559 (the Soviets’ code number on all technical-aid contracts with Pyongyang). The Koreans called it the Furniture Factory—and over time Yongbyon became the heart of a sprawling nuclear industry linking uranium mines with processing mills, fuel-fabrication facilities and a reprocessing plant capable of extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods. Much of the machinery seems to have been re-engineered by Korean scientists working from Soviet prototypes. “It’s very difficult to draw a dividing line between the peaceful and nonpeaceful use of atomic energy,” Yuri Federov, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute for Applied International Research told NEWSWEEK. “But basically the knowledge and expertise in the nuclear field was provided by the Soviets.”
Moscow still refused to give Pyongyang a turnkey nuclear program—what’s needed to design a plant from scratch—let alone the specific expertise needed to build a bomb. In fact, geopolitics began pushing the two communist countries apart in the 1970s. After India’s undeclared nuclear test in 1974, the United States and Soviet Union co-sponsored a global nonproliferation treaty. Kim Il Sung’s brutal purge of pro-Moscow factions from the Korean Workers’ Party put a further strain on relations. North Korea stopped inviting Soviet scientists to participate in its nuclear projects, preferring to acquire expertise on its own through its philosophy of juche (self-reliance). The North twice expanded the capacity of the Yongbyon reactor in the 1970s. In the 1980s North Korea added a 5-megawatt graphite reactor—in effect, a bomb-fuel factory—based on an old British model. In 1987 Kim Il Sung called for the “fast pursuit of nuclear energy,” describing the industry as “futuristic and communist.”
The North’s program owes much to the work of several North Korean diplomats, including Choi Hak Geun. Posted to IAEA’s Vienna headquarters from 1974 to 1978, he scoured the agency’s library and other open-source material for nuclear know-how. South Korea didn’t discover his activities until the early 1980s. “I was shocked to see what the IAEA gave the North,” a senior South Korean scientist told NEWSWEEK. “But then again, it was a time when the agency’s primary goal was to spread nuclear technology and not to regulate it.”
Pyongyang’s most serious push for the bomb began roughly a decade ago—not long after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The aid shipments and the lavish trade subsidies from the Soviet Union and its satellites had stopped flowing. Old security guarantees were gone, too, so North Korea launched new initiatives to bolster its own capabilities. One of these focused on ballistic missiles—both for defense and export—while another radically expanded production of chemical and biological weapons.
Pyongyang had by then shifted its attention from building power plants to developing the bomb. Besides developing plutonium weapons that relied on nuclear power plants for fuel, Korean scientists also sought to build weapons using highly enriched uranium. The latter required reprocessing technologies that breached the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which the North had signed in 1985. As the regime’s intentions became increasingly hard to ignore, Russia and China distanced themselves even further from their former comrades in Pyongyang.

Instead, the North found a new partner—Pakistan. Indian intelligence sources say contacts between the two countries began after Benazir Bhutto became prime minister in 1988. None other than the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, reached out to Pyongyang in 1993, according to a Western diplomatic source in Islamabad. The Pakistani physicist needed a delivery system for the arsenal he was creating, and the North Koreans had just what he was looking for. Kim Jong Il, who took command of the North after his father’s death, agreed to sell Khan the plans and parts to build a Pakistani version of the Taepodong nuclear-capable ballistic missile. In return, says the diplomat, North Korea asked for Pakistan’s centrifuge technology for enriching uranium.
Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, has vehemently denied any such deals. “I guarantee 400 percent that nothing has taken place between us and North Korea,” he said in January. “No transfer of nuclear technology has taken place in the past and [it] will not happen in the future.”
Khan refuses to talk about any aspect of Pakistan’s nuclear program, but he has reportedly made 13 trips to North Korea since his first visit. In addition to supplying plans for Pakistani-style centrifuges (hundreds of —which are needed to extract enough fissile material for a single nuclear device), he is said to have provided the North Koreans with invaluable information on how to buy parts for specialized nuclear equipment. “You can search the world, spending lots of money, and still be unsuccessful,” says Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy. “So someone who has been actively engaged in buying the necessary electronics, hardware, computer codes, switches and magnets is worth his weight in gold.”
The alleged exchanges continued in defiance of the 1994 Agreed Framework signed by Pyongyang and the Clinton administration. That accord stipulated that in exchange for the North’s promise to end its nuclear-weapons program, the Americans would help Pyongyang build two 1,000-megawatt reactors and provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually until 2003, when the reactors were supposed to be finished. The pact crumbled in late 2002 after U.S. intelligence discovered the North’s secret enrichment program. Bush administration officials say Pyongyang got caught buying centrifuge secrets from Pakistan and spun-aluminum tubes from Russia. Confronted with the charge, Pyongyang expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the NPT and announced plans to begin turning fuel rods into bombs.
North Korea probably began cheating on the 1994 deal before the ink was dry. Scores of high-explosive tests done in the late 1990s suggest ongoing work to perfect a nuclear detonator. A female scientist who claims to have been in Yongbyon in the 1990s describes schemes concocted to hide covert weapons research. In a transcript allegedly made after she fled into China last year (and obtained by NEWSWEEK through a humanitarian group that arranged her exile in South Korea), she describes deception at the No. 304 Research Institute where she worked, a facility “involved with making both nuclear and chemical weapons.” To dodge IAEA inspections, she says, “we moved all materials and equipment into underground caves.” Eventually, a new plant called the August Facility was constructed. “The place is hidden inside a forest and connected with a new railroad from other facilities,” she added. “It processed uranium for use in other institutes.”
Despite the mounting evidence of bomb-making capabilities, the West keeps hoping Pyongyang will change its ways. Diplomatic observers predict that the North will agree to a new round of talks with Russia, China, Japan, the United States and South Korea, perhaps as early as next month. Pyongyang’s nuclear threats can only go so far. The Dear Leader may test his “deterrent,” but if he were ever foolish enough to actually use it, he’d lose everything—his power, his perks, his country, his life. Surely he doesn’t want to end up like Kimchaek University’s class of ’62.


With Hideko Takayama in Tokyo, B. J. Lee in Seoul, Ron Moreau and Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi, Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Stefanie Mcintyre in Moscow

[ptraj]

Khurshi guy is denying Israeli charges of proliferation according to this in Dawn

web page

Anyone find another source where Israel made this charge?

[Rangudu]

Pakistan-Saudi trade nuke tech for oil

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on nuclear cooperation, an unimpeachable source said Monday.

"It will be vehemently denied by both countries," added this ranking Pakistani source known to this correspondent for more than a decade as a knowledgeable insider, "but future events will confirm that Pakistan has agreed to provide KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) with the wherewithal for a nuclear deterrent."

In a lightning, hastily arranged, 26-hour "state visit" in Islamabad, Crown Prince Abdullah Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, flew across the Arabian Sea with an entourage of 200, including Foreign Minister Prince Saud and several Cabinet ministers. The pro-American Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, who is next in line to succeed to the throne after Abdullah, was not part of the delegation.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf met Abdullah at the airport and saw him off Sunday night with a 21-gun salute.

The CIA believes that Pakistan already exported nuclear know-how to North Korea in exchange for missile technology. Last year, a Pakistani C-130 was spotted by satellite loading North Korean missiles at Pyongyang airport. Pakistan said this was a straight purchase for cash and denied a nuclear quid pro quo.

This correspondent and the chief of staff of the North Korean Air Force stayed at the same Islamabad hotel in May 2001.

"Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia," the Pakistani source explained, "see a world that is moving from non-proliferation to proliferation of nuclear weapons."

Pakistan, under the late dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq decided to pursue the nuclear option following India's first nuclear test in 1974. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is now estimated at between 35 and 60 weapons.

The Sunni Saudis have concluded that nothing will deter Shiite Iran from continuing its quest for nuclear weapons. Pakistan, on the other hand, is openly concerned about the recent armaments agreement between India, its nuclear rival, and Israel, a long-time nuclear power whose inventory is estimated at between 200 and 400 weapons. Iran and India, located on either side of Pakistan, have also signed a strategic agreement whose aim is regarded with suspicion in Islamabad.

Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafrullah Jamali is scheduled to fly to Tehran later this week to sound out Iranian leaders on the reasons for the defense deal with New Delhi.

To counter what Pakistani and Saudi leaders regard as a multiregional threats, they have decided quietly to move ahead with a two-way exchange - free or cheap oil for nuclear know-how and expertise.

Pakistani pilots have been employed as contract pilots for the Royal Saudi Air Force for the past 30 years. Several hundred thousand Pakistani workers are employed by the Gulf states, both as skilled and unskilled workers, and their remittances are a hard currency boon for the Pakistani Treasury.

In their private talks, according to the United Press International source, Abdullah and Musharraf also discussed the possibility of Pakistan supplying troops, not to Iraq, but to the kingdom. Abdullah can see that the world's largest oil reserves look increasingly vulnerable over the next 10 years.

By mutual agreement, U.S. forces withdrew from Saudi Arabia earlier this year to relocate across the border in the tiny oil sheikhdom of Qatar. Saudi officials also remind their interlocutors that a closed meeting -- later well publicized -- of the U.S. Defense Policy Board in 2002 listened to an expert explain, with a 16-slide presentation, why and how the United States should seize and occupy Saudi oilfields in the country's eastern province.

Richard Perle was then the chairman of the Pentagon-funded Defense Policy Board. Later in 2002, he resigned the chairmanship following a conflict with his business interests, but he remains a member of the influential panel.

Perle is also known throughout the Middle East as one of the key architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former strategic adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu while the latter was Israel's prime minister.

The denials of any secret nuclear agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the source said, "must be seen in the same context as Iranian denials about its own nuclear weapons plans."

Prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, along with the United Arab Emirates, were the only countries that recognized and aided Afghanistan's Taliban regime that had been educated in Pakistan's madrasas (Koranic schools). Taliban is now resurgent along the mountainous regions that straddle the Pakistan-Afghan border. Pakistani and U.S. Special Forces have been working the area in tandem since last summer to flush out Taliban and al-Qaida high altitude hideouts.

Pakistani officials are also fearful that the Bush admin will leave them in the lurch after al-Qaida leader Osama bin laden has been killed or captured. They also speculate about what the policy would be in the event of a Democratic Party victory in the 2004 U.S. elections.

To this day, the Saudi clergy continues to fund Pakistan's madrasas that are a substitute for the country's non-existent national education system. The only schools outside madrasas are expensive private institutions. Pakistan, with a crushing defense burden, only spends 1.7 percent of GDP on education (vs. 8 percent in India and 16.5 percent in the United States).

Some 12,000 Koranic schools provide free room and board to some 700,000 Pakistani boys (ages 6 to 16) where they are taught to read and write in Urdu and Arabic and recite the Koran by heart. No other disciplines are practiced, but students are proselytized with anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Indian propaganda. By the time they graduate, the majority is convinced that becoming a jihadi, or holy warrior, is the only way to block America's alleged plans to destroy Islam.

Musharraf, in a milestone speech three months before Sept. 11, 2001, denounced the danger of these schools and urged syllabus reform.

"We are producing terrorists," he warned at the time.

But all attempts at reform have been blocked by the mullahs with the support of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal -- a coalition of the six major politico-religious parties -- that now governs two of Pakistan's four provinces.

Musharraf has opted for appeasement of the MMA rather than confrontation. At the state banquet for Saudi Arabia's Abdullah, the principal MMA chieftains were invited and attended. The two traditional mainstream parties were not present. They were pointedly left off the guest list.

[Arun A]

A Secret Place

It’s hard to keep from laughing at the ugly vases, carpet slippers, House of Commons whisky glasses and other junk on display until I notice a peculiar detail. In the past few years, one gift after another has been credited to high-ranking defense officials from Iran and Pakistan. Is it coincidence that all three countries are widely suspected of trafficking in nuclear secrets? Whatever the envoys talked about, it probably wasn’t train schedules.

[Div]

Yes its from Debka...but still, worth a look see.

"Pakistan will deploy nuclear missiles and warheads at Saudi bases under military-nuclear accord signed in Islamabad by Crown prince Abdullah. DEBKAfile adds: Pakistani security umbrella will replace US troop presence withdrawn from kingdom this summer. Deal flatly defies Bush warning to Abdullah this year not to deploy nuclear weapons on Saudi soil."

[Roop]

Div:

Debka are a POS bunch of fabricators. If the Packees deploy nukes in Saudi Arabia, how long do you think they would last before Israel and Unkil blasted them to oblivion? And the Packdorks are going to be in no position to fight back, because the cunning Chankian baniya Yindoos are going to be conducting LCA tests over Sargodha.

It's that Axis of YYYvil thing again.

P.S. How's my order for two squadrons of DivRaps (Div's Raptors) coming along?

[Arun A]

MR: Debka is Israeli disinformation, but i wouldn't dismiss the UPI report.

The whole thing has to do with Israel's strike against the Syrians. With the US out of saudi arabia and a huge force in Iraq, the saudis probably think Israel could strike them at will. If the Israelis do that, the saudi regime will be the target of the impotent rage that will surely flow into the saudi streets.

There are other reports of saudi arabia violating an agreement with the US not to station F-15s in a base nearest Israel.

[jarugn]

From Drudge Report

Tomorrow's(10/22/2003)Washington Times will headline Pakistan-Saudi Nuclear Exchange Agreement inspite of the denials from Bush Adminstration.

Washington Times has obtained hard evidence that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on “nuclear cooperation” that will provide the Saudis with nuclear-weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil, the WASHINGTON TIMES will report on Wednesday, sources tell DRUDGE... Developing Hard...

This truly explains the freaky missile tests...

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031021-112804-8451r.htm

[arun]

Originally posted by Rangudu:
[QB]Pakistan-Saudi trade nuke tech for oil

After Arnaud de Borchgrave, the turn of Major Gen. Aharon Zeevi, head of Israel's Military Intelligence to weigh in (Borchgrave's source ?).

October 22, 2003 -- JERUSALEM - In an escalation of the Middle East nuclear-arms race, Saudi Arabia is trying to buy from Pakistan nuclear warheads for its missiles, the head of Israeli military intelligence disclosed yesterday.
The secret Saudi effort is designed to meet the imminent threat from an Iranian atomic arsenal, Israeli Major Gen. Aharon Zeevi told a parliament committee.

Senior Saudi officials are directing talks in Pakistan to obtain nuclear warheads that would be fitted on ground-to-ground missiles based in the Saudi peninsula, he said. Zeevi didn't say how close the Saudis were to joining the nuclear club, but said both Iran and Saudi Arabia were seeking atomic weapons "in the immediate future."

Saudis trying to buy Nukes.

The Saudi's predictably promptly deny the charge and have this to say :

Wednesday, 22 October , 2003, 00:42

Riyadh: Saudi Arabia did not strike any military deals with Pakistan during Crown Prince Abdullah's weekend visit to Islamabad, Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz said in remarks published Tuesday "No military agreements were concluded between the kingdom and Pakistan during Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz's visit to Islamabad" on Saturday and Sunday, the daily Okaz quoted him as saying.

The newspaper did not make clear why the defense chief was denying that any military deals were signed between the two countries, which have close ties.

Israeli radio on Tuesday quoted military intelligence chief Aharon Zeevi as telling the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee Saudi officials were currently discussing in Islamabad a request by Riyadh to deploy Pakistani 'nuclear warheads' on its territory.
Earlier, Arab press reports said the two sides had discussed the possibility of deploying Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia to replace thousands of US forces that were withdrawn

No military deals with Pak: Saudi Arabia.

Arnaud De Borchgrave then delivers this follow on punch, with many references to Pakistan's patchy proliferation record :

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on "nuclear cooperation" that will provide the Saudis with nuclear-weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil, according to a ranking Pakistani insider.

The disclosure came at the end of a 26-hour state visit to Islamabad last weekend by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, who flew across the Arabian Sea with an entourage of 200, including Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal and several Cabinet ministers.

Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the pro-American defense minister who is next in line to the throne after the crown prince, was not part of the delegation.

"It will be vehemently denied by both countries," said the Pakistani source, whose information has proven reliable for more than a decade, "but future events will confirm that Pakistan has agreed to provide [Saudi Arabia] with the wherewithal for a nuclear deterrent."

As predicted, Saudi Arabia — which has faced strong international suspicion for years that it was seeking a nuclear capability through Pakistan — strongly denied the claim.

Prince Sultan was quoted in the Saudi newspaper Okaz yesterday saying that "no military agreements were concluded between the kingdom and Pakistan during [Prince Abdullah´s] visit to Islamabad."

Mohammad Sadiq, deputy chief of mission for Pakistan's embassy in Washington, also denied any nuclear deal was in the works. "That is totally incorrect," he said in a telephone interview. "We have a clear policy: We will not export our nuclear expertise."

But the CIA believes Pakistan already has shared its nuclear know-how, working with North Korea in exchange for missile technology.

A Pakistani C-130 was spotted by satellite loading North Korean missiles at Pyongyang airport last year. Pakistan, which is estimated to have between 35 and 60 nuclear weapons, said this was a straight purchase for cash and strongly denied a nuclear quid pro quo.

"Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia," the Pakistani source said, "see a world that is moving from nonproliferation to proliferation of nuclear weapons."

The Saudi rulers, who are Sunni Muslims, are believed to have concluded that nothing will deter the Shi'ite Muslims who rule Iran from continuing their quest for a nuclear weapons capability.

Pakistan, meanwhile, is concerned about a recent arms agreement between India, its nuclear archrival, and Israel, a longtime nuclear power whose inventory is estimated at between 200 and 400 weapons.

To counter what Pakistani and Saudi leaders regard as multiple regional threats, the two countries have decided to quietly move ahead with an exchange of free or cheap Saudi oil for Pakistani nuclear know-how, the Pakistani source said.

Pakistanis have worked as contract pilots for the Royal Saudi Air Force for the past 30 years. Several hundred thousand Pakistani workers are employed by the Gulf states, both as skilled and unskilled workers, and their remittances are a hard currency boon for the Pakistani treasury.

Prince Abdullah reportedly sees Saudi oil reserves, the world's largest, as becoming increasingly vulnerable over the next 10 years.

By mutual agreement, U.S. forces withdrew from Saudi Arabia earlier this year to relocate across the border in the tiny oil sheikdom of Qatar.

Saudi officials also are still chafing over a closed meeting — later well publicized — of the U.S. Defense Policy Board in 2002, where an expert explained, with a 16-slide Powerpoint presentation, why and how the United States should seize and occupy oil fields in the country's Eastern Province.

Several incidents have raised questions over the extent of Saudi-Pakistani cooperation in defense matters.

A new policy paper by Simon Henderson, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, noted that Prince Sultan visited Pakistan's highly restricted Kahuta uranium enrichment and missile assembly factory in 1999, a visit that prompted a formal diplomatic complaint from Washington.

And a son of Prince Abdullah attended Pakistan's test-firing last year of its Ghauri-class missile, which has a range of 950 miles and could be used to deliver a nuclear payload.

President Bush was reported to have confronted Pervez Musharraf over the Saudi nuclear issue during the Pakistani president's visit to Camp David this summer, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage raised the issue during a trip to Islamabad earlier this month, according to Mr. Henderson's paper.

"Apart from proliferation concerns, Washington likely harbors more general fears about what would happen if either of the regimes in Riyadh or Islamabad became radically Islamic," according to Mr. Henderson.

GlobalSecurity.org, a well-connected defense Internet site, found in a recent survey that Saudi Arabia has the infrastructure to exploit such nuclear exports very quickly.

"While there is no direct evidence that Saudi Arabia has chosen a nuclear option, the Saudis have in place a foundation for building a nuclear deterrent," according to the Web site.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia in secret nuke pact.

[Div]

Mohan,

The mainstream Israeli media sources seem to be toeing a similar line.

Btw, the Raptors were never part of our original AJT deal. I am still negotiating with Lockheed Martin for the necessary ToT to produce Raptors in my garage.

[Div]

Btw if these Chinese, I mean Paki nukes aren't already in KSA, will they be transported there in C-130s?

[ramana]

One more KSA TSP story....
From Newsinsight.net

----------------
Saudis seek N-deterrent from Pakistan
22 October 2003: Saudi Arabia has shared with Pakistan details of a secret US plan to democratise the Middle-East in three phases, which could conceivably lead to regime-change in both Riyadh and Islamabad, and there have been hectic consultations between the two countries over the past two months to confront "this danger".

Diplomats say that Saudi Arabia has squealed about the US plan to other anti-America regimes in Sudan, Libya and Syria, and in fact mooted a proposal at the recent OIC meeting in Malaysia to form a military bloc against perceived Western and particularly US aggression.

The Iraq war was part of the first phase of the US plan signed by president George W.Bush earlier this year, and will continue for another six months, the second phase will commence thereon to "moderate" several Middle-East regimes who support terrorism and pursue WMD programmes, and the final phase will involve action against regimes who refuse to democratise.

This last phase will be carried out immediately after the US elections, either by the Bush administration if it is reelected, or by a Democratic government, and it is this phase which has scared Saudi Arabia and in turn Pakistan.

Diplomats say that it is to prepare against this third phase that Saudi Arabia is in secret talks with Pakistan to acquire a nuclear deterrent, and Saudi desperation has led to over fifty high-level secret interactions between the two countries in the past few months, and it was this that was behind the Saudi proposal for a OIC military bloc.

Top diplomats said that the US is minutely monitoring Pakistan's nuclear programme, and some of them confirmed that Pakistan was on the hitlist in the third phase of the American plan to restructure the Middle-East.
-----------------------------
There was 1996 story in Def News about a Saudi advisor who stated that KSA had two track approach to the problem and that Saddam had turned against them and the other track was with TSP and was still going strong.
Are there any transcripts/reports of the Ibn Saud- FDR mtg in WWII on a destroyer? Is it still classiefied? Tim Hoytt?

[Raj Malhotra]

Nations like Libya, SA and Iran may be trying to do NKorea on USA. I think US should first destroy pakistan with the help of India and then bring democracy to middle east. Otherwise 500% general is going to finish off US middle east policy.

[Calvin]

Gentlemen: How much free oil has Pakistan been getting from Saudi Arabia? And when did this free oil prpogram start?

[jrjrao]

Calvin, I think this started immediately after Pak tested its nukes, and after the sanctions that bit immediately soon after.

Something like 60,000 barrels a day. At first, the Saudis were calling it a "deferred payment" deal, but in a year or so, they officially made it an outright grant. Value has been something over $1 billion a year (money that was saved and redirected to Pakistan's jehadi drug fix).

[Anaath]

Before making light of the recent news about KSA acquiring new assets, observers will be well-advised to research how much guile and trickery was employed by the family in obtaining CSS-2s from PRC in the 80s.

These people are rich, cunning and relentless. They have a lot to lose and will do what it takes to protect what they have.

[ramana]

AD, IIRC Prince Bandar was a prime player in that deal.

Here is more stuff from newsinsight.net.....

US forcing Musharraf to get elected by 2005
23 October 2003: Rejecting controlled elections and "guided democracy" in Pakistan, the United States has ordered General Parvez Musharraf to get himself elected latest by 2005, or step down, and accordingly, the military and the ISI are going through the paces of setting up a political party for him.

Apprehensive about the rise of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, US ambassador to Pakistan, Nancy Powell, called upon Musharraf and passed on her government's message of early restoration of democracy, and both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharief have been informed about the American decision.

Bhutto and Sharief insist that Musharraf must permit them to return and contest the elections against him, since they fear he will otherwise split the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) and PPP (Pakistan Peoples' Party) in the search for experienced candidates and trained cadres, and the US has accordingly instructed Musharraf, according to senior Western diplomats.

Nancy Powell delivered the Bush administration's ultimatum a week before the UN General Assembly session, so that Musharraf could prepare his objections when meeting US officials in New York, but both American thinktank specialists and state-department representatives rejected his pleas that the US proposal stemmed from a lack of understanding of the ground situation in Pakistan.

Alongwith early elections, the US wants to restructure the Pakistan military, which will involve scaling down the operations of the notorious ISI, and keeping a strict watch on its terrorist activities in India and Afghanistan, though diplomats would not reveal more on this subject.

The US has said that Pakistan will receive US military assistance only if it tailors its military according to US requirements, which will necessarily involve a return to the barracks, stepping out of government, breaking off links with terrorist organisations like the Al-Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and in return, America will also set up a thinktank with US and Pakistani servicemen.

In line with its aim to moderate the Pakistan army, the US is also effecting a purge of hardline elements, and this is expected to occur soon, and as an outlet for disempowered service officers, America is permitting Musharraf to include them in his proposed political party, which will also comprise upwardly-mobile Pakistani youth, academicians, and defected politicians from the PML-N and PPP.

-------------------
This could be wishful thinking or kite flying but things are getting interesting. What I find pertinent is there is a Plan-B to be executed by whoever comes into the WH. That means the US elites are serious. All the hearings and medals are charades to pacify the raging beast.

[Anaath]

R,

Shri B. Raman’s latest(http://www.saag.org/papers9/paper821.html) and the above report notwithstanding, it is very difficult to accept optimistic assessments of the planning and perspicacity of the various handlers.

The well-orchestrated shifting of blame away from the Etonian and towards the (already) captive Yemeni-Balochi is most distasteful.

All of a sudden, justice has been denied in the case of DP. We Yindoos are of course used to being expendable, but people of the other Y(s)?

A pessimistic reading is that with this transference, a 1008th attempt is being made to segregate JeM, LeT etc. and the westward-oriented ones. Like the previous 1007, this too shall fail, but our own people, who should know better, seem to buy this logic. Among the “civilian” alternatives, BB is the one we should watch for. Way more saleable (and already sold) than Loha Purush.

[Roop]

Ramana:

I really don't think the Americans care whether TSP is ruled by a democrat, a dictator or a horned toad. The only thing they care about is that they (the Packees) behave themelves in international affairs, i.e. stop making war on the good guys. Internally, they can do what the hell they want to with their own citizens.

I have no problem with this attitude, but the definition of Packees "behaving themselves" would obviously depend on the observer. For India, it would mean to stop funding and organizing Islamofascist terrorism and to leave India (all of it, not just Kashmir) alone. For America, it would mean to stop organizing and supporting AlQ-type terrorists, and, if they have an excess of jihadic enthusiasm, to expend it on India and Russia.

What I'm saying is, America doesn't give a rat's azs about democracy in Muslim countries or any such humbug. The term "Islamic democracy" is an oxymoron, because any society that wanted to become democratic would ipso facto have to be non-Islamic.

Spinster:

You probably know that one of the most popular bumper-sticker slogans of the NRA (National Rifle Association) is "An armed society is a polite society". I think, by extension, Jumrao and the WMA (World Missile Association) would say "A nukeICBM-armed world is a polite world".

[Arun A]

Arnaud de Borchgrave is on C-span right now talking about the TSP-saudi nuke deal.

[Arun A]

He was on to discuss the TSP saudi deal. Most of the calls were from people opposed to the Iraq war or some nuts who think Israel carried out the 9/11 attacks.

He talked of the CM of the NWFP, Akram Durrani(?), whom he met a couple of days ago. The CM thinks Nawa-i-waqt(sp?) is a reliable source when it reports 4000 iraqi women have been r[/b]aped by American soldiers.

He talked about a conversation he had with gola. Gola told him 1% of TSP junta was OBL-type extremist. When ADB pointed out this made 1.4 million people, gola said he hadn't thought of it that way.

[Div]

Analysis: Footprints of a nuclear deal
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031024-024705-1151r

[Prateek]

Another one on : Footprints of Pakistan's nuclear deals

Footprints of Pakistan's nuclear deals
Monday October 27 2003 00:19 IST
IANS

WASHINGTON: The US State Department, which is now saying it is unlikely that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have a nuclear pact, carried a study on its official Web site last year saying the kingdom had discussed a nuclear deal with Islamabad, reports UPI.

State Department's Deputy Spokesman J Adam Ereli said earlier this week that he had "not seen any information to substantiate" that Saudi Arabia was trying to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan.

The spokesman also rejected media reports suggesting that the two countries had already struck a deal that would allow Pakistan to receive Saudi oil in return for nuclear know-how as "bald assertions".

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also vehemently denied the original UPI report.

"This story has been going around for 25 years. It is absolutely wrong," said Adel Al Jubeir, a senior adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, in Washington.

"We have not, do not and will not acquire nuclear capability," he insisted.

UPI's editor-in-chief Arnaud de Borchgrave said: "I knew that denials would rain down from both countries. They were hardly in a position to confirm a secret understanding 48 hours after it had taken place.

"Besides, denials from both countries about many major events that subsequently turned out to be correct news reports are fairly routine.

"The late President Zia ul-Haq denied repeatedly during his 11 years in power that Pakistan was involved in a nuclear weapons programme.

Saudi officials have also denied time and again they were funding Pakistan's 'madrassas' (Islamic seminaries) to the tune of several billion dollars since 1989 where several million young Pakistani boys have been taught only the Koran by heart -- and to hate America, Israel and India.

"Despite all the adverse publicity, the Saudi clergy is still funding them today."

A US State Department study last year reported that senior Saudi officials had discussed the prospect of nuclear weapons cooperation with Pakistan.

The report, published in the department's strategic journal the US Foreign Policy Agenda, said although "Saudi Arabia does not have weapons of mass destruction, it did...buy long-range CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China."

"Very senior Saudi officials have held conversations with officials involved in the Pakistani nuclear programme, and possibly with similar officials in other countries," said author Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who wrote the report for the State Department.

The report -- Weapons of Mass Destruction: The New Strategic Framework -- also probes the impact of Pakistan's nuclear programme on "broader trends in the greater Middle East, including the growing overlap of arms races," and "the impact of North Korean proliferation and the India-Pakistan arms race".

Cordesman pointed out that "while Pakistan is not part of the Middle East, Iran uses Pakistan's nuclear and missile arms race with India as one of its rationales for developing its own long-range missiles.

"Iranian officials privately refer to tensions with Pakistan as a possible reason for Iranian proliferation."

The report first appeared in the August 2002 issue of the State Department's journal and was published on the department's Web site. US officials in August 2002 said Saudi leaders also discussed the procurement of intermediate-range missiles that Pakistan makes.

The missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. US officials said Saudi officials were invited to tour Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities last year but no sales were concluded.

In November last year, a former US Defence Intelligence Agency official said that Saudi Arabia had been financing Islamabad's nuclear and missile purchases from China.

In a research paper, DIA senior China analyst Thomas Woodrow said: "Saudi Arabia has been involved in funding Pakistan's missile and nuclear programme purchases from China, which has resulted in Pakistan becoming a nuclear weapon-producing and proliferating state."

The paper also pointed out that Saudi Arabia was "buying nuclear capability from China through a proxy state with Pakistan serving as the cut-out".

Woodrow said that Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan Abdulaziz had "toured (Pakistan's) uranium-enrichment plant and missile production facilities in Kahuta (near Islamabad)" just after the May 1999 nuclear tests.

He said that the Saudi prince "may also have been present in Pakistan" during the test-launch of its nuclear-capable Ghauri missile in 1999.

"If Riyadh's influence over Pakistan extends to its nuclear programmes, Saudi Arabia could rapidly become a de facto nuclear power through a simple shipment of missiles and warheads," said the former DIA officer.

Saudi Arabia, he said, has given money to China for Pakistan's missile and nuclear programme.

[arun]

Dr. George Perkovich is not buying Pakistan’s claims of innocence in proliferating nuclear weapon technologies to Iran and North Korea (no mention of Saudi Arabia). Says Musharraf knows about it and warns of US retribution.

First time I am seeing Musharraf directly being held to book.

US has concern on N-proliferation

From Absar Alam

WASHINGTON—Pakistan’s denials notwithstanding, the US claims Pakistan had a role in North Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes and once Osama bin Laden is killed or arrested, Washington will take up this issue with Islamabad, The Nation learnt reliably.

Analysts having close contacts with the Congressmen and Bush administration believe that US Congress may place sanctions back on Pakistan once certain goals in the ongoing war against terrorism are met in the region.

“They are gonna hit hard, once Osama bin Laden is found,” Dr George Perkovich, a nuclear proliferation expert said. Dr Perkovich, who is associated with Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said there are Pakistan’s fingerprints over the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes. “ And Musharraf knows about it, ” Perkovich said referring to the US claims on Pakistan’s cooperation with these states and the concerns that Washington is keeping under the carpet for the time being.

“We do not accept Pakistan’s claims that it did not play any role in North Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes. We ask Pakistan to quit selling this technology to any other country,” said Perkovich, who, however, admitted the US did not exactly know if North Korea had already made the nuclear bomb. “As happened in Iraq, the intelligence (on North Korea) can be way off,” he said.

It was learnt that the US was no more demanding Pakistan to quit its nuclear programme as it was obvious that it would not be possible in near future. Hence to keep Pakistan under constant pressure, US would continue to allege Islamabad of exchanging information with North Korea and Iran.

The US, Perkovich said, believed Pakistan failed to stop the leakage of information to these countries. “It rather supported,” Perkovich claimed adding Washington wants Islamabad to stop supplying any knowledge, know-how, and contact details from where certain nuclear-related stuff could be obtained by these two countries.

Pakistan, however, has been denying these allegations. Islamabad believes the US allegations are part of propaganda let loose against Pakistan for being the only nuclear power in the Islamic world. Unlike other countries nuclear capability, the Jewish-dominated western media keeps naming Pakistan’s as “Islamic bomb.”

A separate media campaign, terming Pakistan as the main hub of terrorism, is fast taking roots in the western press. The allegations of Pakistan being the collaborator in North Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes and the breeding ground for terrorists are being repeated to keep Islamabad under an unending pressure so that it could deliver “even more” to serve the US interests.

http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/Oct-2003/26/main/top5.asp

[Kuttan]

From a Paki terrorist nutcase's webpage: (obviously this was not written by him).

"
Nuclear Program Chronology
Detailed Chronology Of Pakistani Nuclear Program As of Nuclear Tests:
1965: Pakistani nuclear research reactor at Parr, Rawalpindi, starts functioning.
1968: Nonproliferation Treaty completed. Pakistan refuse to sign.

1974: India tests a device of up to 15 kilotons and calls the test a ``peaceful nuclear explosion.'' Pakistani Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tells meeting of Pakistan's top scientists of intention to develop nuclear arms.

1974 -- Pakistan proposed to India the establishment of a nuclear weapons free zone in south Asia

1978 -- Pakistan proposed to India a joint Indo-Pakistan declaration renouncing the acquisition and manufacture of nuclear weapons

1979 -- The United States cut off aid to Pakistan under section 669 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 FAA) after it was learned that Pakistan had secretly begun construction of a uranium enrichment facility.

1979 -- Pakistan proposed to India mutual inspections by India and Pakistan of nuclear facilities

1979 -- Pakistan proposed to India simultaneous adherence to the NPT by India and Pakistan

1979 -- Pakistan proposed to India simultaneous acceptance of full-scope IAEA safeguards

Early 1980's--Multiple reports that Pakistan obtained a pre-tested, atomic bomb design from China.

Early 1980's--Multiple reports that Pakistan obtained bomb-grade enriched uranium from China.

1980--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Re-export via Canada (components of inverters used in gas centrifuge enrichment activities).

1981--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: New York, zirconium (nuclear fuel cladding material).

1981--AP story cites contents of reported US State Department cable stating `We have strong reason to believe that Pakistan is seeking to develop a nuclear explosives capability * * * Pakistan is conducting a program for the design and development of a triggering package for nuclear explosive devices.'

1981--Publication of book, Islamic Bomb, citing recent Pakistani efforts to construct a nuclear test site.

1982/3--Several European press reports indicate that Pakistan was using Middle Eastern intermediaries to acquire bomb parts (13-inch `steel spheres' and `steel petal shapes').

1983--Declassified US government assessment concludes that `There is unambiguous evidence that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons development program * * * We believe the ultimate application of the enriched uranium produced at Kahuta, which is unsafe guarded, is clearly nuclear weapons.'

1984--President Zia states that Pakistan has acquired a `very modest' uranium enrichment capability for `nothing but peaceful purposes.'

1984--President Reagan reportedly warns Pakistan of `grave consequences' if it enriches uranium above 5%.

1985--ABC News reports that US believes Pakistan has `successfully tested' a `firing mechanism' of an atomic bomb by means of a non-nuclear explosion, and that US krytrons `have been acquired' by Pakistan.

1985--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Texas, krytrons (nuclear weapon triggers).

1985--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: US cancelled license for export of flash x-ray camera to Pakistan (nuclear weapon diagnostic uses) because of proliferation concerns.

1985/6--Media cites production of highly enriched, bomb-grade uranium in violation of a commitment to the US.

1985 -- Pressler Amendment [section 620E(e) of the Foreign Assistance Act] requires a total cut-off of U.S. aid to Islamabad unless the president can certify that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear weapon, and that continued US aid will significantly decrease the probability of its developing one in the future.

1986--Bob Woodward article in Washington Post cites alleged DIA report saying Pakistan `detonated a high explosive test device between Sept. 18 and Sept. 21 as part of its continuing efforts to build an implosion-type nuclear weapon;' says Pakistan has produced uranium enriched to a 93.5% level.

1986--Press reports cite U.S. `Special National Intelligence Estimate' concluding that Pakistan had produced weapons-grade material.

1986--Commenting on Pakistan's nuclear capability, General Zia tells interviewer, `It is our right to obtain the technology. And when we acquire this technology, the Islamic world will possess it with us.'

1986--Declassified memo to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger states, `Despite strong U.S. concern, Pakistan continues to pursue a nuclear explosive capability * * * If operated at its nominal capacity, the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant could produce enough weapons-grade material to build several nuclear devices per year.'

1987 -- Pakistan proposed to India an agreement on a bilateral or regional nuclear test ban treaty

1987--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: Pennsylvania, maraging steel & beryllium (used in centrifuge manufacture and bomb components).

1987--London Financial Times reports US spy satellites have observed construction of second uranium enrichment plant in Pakistan.

1987--Pakistan's leading nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan states in published interview that `what the CIA has been saying about our possessing the bomb is correct.'

1987--West German official confirms that nuclear equipment recently seized on way to Pakistan was suitable for `at least 93% enrichment' of uranium; blueprints of uranium enrichment plant also seized in Switzerland.

1987--U.S. Nuclear Export Control Violation: California, oscilloscopes, computer equipment (useful in nuclear weapon R&D).

1987--According to photocopy of a reported German foreign ministry memo published in Paris in 1990, UK government official tells German counterpart on European nonproliferation working group that he was `convinced that Pakistan had `a few small' nuclear weapons.'

1987 -- China concluded a deal with Pakistan to sell M-11 missiles and launchers.

1988--President Reagan waives an aid cutoff for Pakistan due to an export control violation; in his formal certification, he confirmed that `material, equipment, or technology covered by that provision was to be used by Pakistan in the manufacture of a nuclear explosive device.'

1988--Hedrick Smith article in New York Times reports US government sources believe Pakistan has produced enough highly enriched uranium for 4-6 bombs.

1988--President Zia tells Carnegie Endowment delegation in interview that Pakistan has attained a nuclear capability `that is good enough to create an impression of deterrence.'

1989--Multiple reports of Pakistan modifying US-supplied F-16 aircraft for nuclear delivery purposes; wind tunnel tests cited in document reportedly from West German intelligence service.

1989--Test launch of Hatf-2 missile: Payload (500 kilograms) and range (300 kilometers) meets `nuclear-capable' standard under Missile Technology Control Regime.

1989--CIA Director Webster tells Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that `Clearly Pakistan is engaged in developing a nuclear capability.'

1989--Media claims that Pakistan acquired tritium gas and tritium facility from West Germany in mid-1980's.

1989--ACDA unclassified report cites Chinese assistance to missile program in Pakistan.

1989--UK press cites nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and Iraq.

1989--Article in Nuclear Fuel states that the United States has issued `about 100 specific communiqués to the West German Government related to planned exports to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and its affiliated organizations;' exports reportedly included tritium and a tritium recovery facility.

1989--Article in Defense & Foreign Affairs Weekly states `sources close to the Pakistani nuclear program have revealed that Pakistani scientists have now perfected detonation mechanisms for a nuclear device.'

1989--Reporting on a recent customs investigation, West German magazine Stern reports, `since the beginning of the eighties over 70 [West German] enterprises have supplied sensitive goods to enterprises which for years have been buying equipment for Pakistan's ambitious nuclear weapons program.'

1989--Gerard Smith, former US diplomat and senior arms control authority, claims US has turned a `blind eye' to proliferation developments Pakistan in and Israel.

1989--Senator Glenn delivers two lengthy statements addressing Pakistan's violations of its uranium enrichment commitment to the United States and the lack of progress on nonproliferation issues from Prime Minister Bhutto's democratically elected government after a year in office; Glenn concluded, `There simply must be a cost to non-compliance--when a solemn nuclear pledge is violated, the solution surely does not lie in voiding the pledge.'

1989-1990--reports of secret construction of unsafe guard nuclear research reactor; components from Europe.

Spring 1990 -- Pakistan reportedly reacted to Indian Army war game maneuvers near its border by preparing to drop one of seven weapons from a specially configured C-130 cargo plane. [02 December 1992 NBC News report]

1990--US News cites `western intelligence sources' claiming Pakistan recently `cold-tested' a nuclear device and is now building a plutonium production reactor; article says Pakistan is engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran.

1990--French magazine publishes photo of West German government document citing claim by UK official that British government believes Pakistan already possesses `a few small' nuclear weapons; cites Ambassador Richard Kennedy claim to UK diplomat that Pakistan has broken its pledge to the US not to enrich uranium over 5%.

1990--London Sunday Times cites growing U.S. and Soviet concerns about Pakistani nuclear program; paper claims F-16 aircraft are being modified for nuclear delivery purposes; claims US spy satellites have observed `heavily armed convoys' leaving Pakistan uranium enrichment complex at Kahuta and heading for military airfields.

1990--Pakistani biography of top nuclear scientist (Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan and the Islamic Bomb), claims US showed `model' of Pakistani bomb to visiting Pakistani diplomat as part of unsuccessful nonproliferation effort.

1990--Defense & Foreign Affairs Weekly reports `US officials now believe that Pakistan has quite sufficient computing power in country to run all the modeling necessary to adequately verify the viability of the country's nuclear weapons technology.'

1990--Dr. A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's bomb, receives `Man of the Nation Award.'

1990--Washington Post documents 3 recent efforts by Pakistan to acquire special arc-melting furnaces with nuclear and missile applications.

October 1990 -- President Bush announced that he could no longer provide Congress with Pressler Amendment certification that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear weapon. Economic and military aid was duly terminated, though the Bush administration continued to permit a limited number of commercial military sales to Pakistan. Pakistan handled the cutoff with little public rancor and committed itself to freezing the nuclear program in an attempt to placate the United States.

1991 -- Pakistan proposed to India commencement of a multilateral conference on the nuclear proliferation in south Asia

1991--Wall Street Journal says Pakistan is buying nuclear-capable M-11 missile from China.

1991--Sen. Moynihan says in television interview, `Last July [1990] the Pakistanis machined 6 nuclear Pakistan warheads. And they've still got them.'

1991--Time quotes businessman, `BCCI is functioning as the owners' representative for Pakistan's nuclear-bomb project.'

1991--India and Pakistan enter agreement prohibiting attacks on each other's nuclear installations.

July 1991 - Reliable reports from Islamabad confirm that Pakistan had frozen production of HEU and halted the manufacturing of nuclear weapons components.

1992--Pakistani foreign secretary publicly discusses Pakistan's possession of `cores' of nuclear devices.

Late 1992 -- The US Government determines that China had transferred items controlled under the international Missile Technology Control Regime to Pakistan.

December 1992 -- The US Government asked Pakistan to return eight US Navy frigates and a supply ship that had been leased to the Pakistan Navy, which accounted for more than half of Pakistan's major surface combatants.

01 December 1992 -- Senator Larry Pressler reportedly stated in a press interview that he had been told by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that Pakistan had assembled seven weapons and could air drop one in a matter of hours [Dec. 1, 1992 NBC News broadcast].

1993 -- Pakistan proposed to India creation of a missile-free zone in south Asia

25 August 1993 -- The United States imposed "Category Two" sanctions against certain Chinese and Pakistani entities that were involved in an M-11 missile-related transfer, which is prohibited under US law.

Late 1993 -- The Clinton Administration, citing what it considered to be asymmetrical treatment accorded to Pakistan and India over their respective nuclear programs, proposed revising the Pressler Amendment and certain "country-specific" sections of the Foreign Assistance Act. The administration argued that by the time nuclear nonproliferation provisions had been added to the Foreign Assistance Act, India had already acquired the capability to build nuclear weapons and thus Pakistan had borne the brunt of most United States sanctions.

Early 1994 -- The Clinton Administration withdrew its proposal to revise the amendment because of strong criticism from a number of influential members of Congress, including Senator Pressler himself.

April 1994 - Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott visits Islamabad to propose a one-time sale of F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan. Delivery of the planes would be contingent on specific commitments from Pakistan regarding its nuclear program, including a verifiable cap on the production of fissile materials. Talbott states that there is "broad agreement" between the United States and Pakistan on the goal of "first capping, then reducing, and eventually eliminating weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles from South Asia."

April 1995 -- Prime Minister Bhutto visits Washington.

September 1995 -- The Clinton Administration proposes revisions to the Pressler Amendment, citing the Amendment's roadblocks to cooperation with Pakistan's Government in areas such as combating terrorism and furthering US commercial interests in Pakistan. Under the Brown Amendment, the US would not deliver the controversial F-16 aircraft or resume an official military supply relationship with Pakistan, but the President decided to sell the F-16 aircraft to other countries and return the proceeds to Pakistan.

01 January 1996 -- India and Pakistan exchange lists of atomic installations which each side has pledged not to attack under an over seven-year-old confidence-building agreement.

January 1996 -- The Brown amendment was signed into law to relieve some of the pressures created by the Pressler sanctions, which had crippled parts of the Pakistani military, particularly the Air Force. The Brown amendment allowed nearly $370 million of previously embargoed arms and spare parts to be delivered to Pakistan. It also permitted limited military assistance for the purposes of counter-terrorism, peacekeeping, anti-narcotics efforts, and some military training.

March 1996 -- Pakistan commissioned an unsafe guarded nuclear reactor, expected to become fully operational in the late 1990s, that will provide it with a capability to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Late 1996 -- Pakistan's main nuclear weapons laboratory, the A.Q. Khan Laboratory in Kahuta, purchased 5,000 ring magnets from China. The ring magnets would allow Pakistan to effectively double its capacity to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons production.

03 October 1996 -- Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto called for the convening of a South Asia security conference that would deal with, among other things, Kashmir and the nuclear arms issue.

04 July 1997 -- Pakistan confirms test-firing of new indigenous Hatf missile.

06 September 1997 -- Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif claims Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons, saying that: "Pakistan's nuclear capability is now an established fact. Whatever we have, we have a right to keep it...."

28 May 1998: Pakistan detonates five nuclear devices. Pakistan claimed that the five nuclear tests measured up to 5.0 on the Richter scale, with a reported yield of up to 40 KT (equivalent TNT).

30 May 1998 Pakistan tested one more nuclear warheads, with a yield of 12 kilotons, bringing the total number of claimed tests to six."

[jrjrao]

By Yossef Bodansky and Gregory R. Copley.

Pakistan Agrees To Station Nuclear Weapons, Long-Range Missiles In Saudi Arabia; European, Indian Targets Within Reach.

Pakistan has reached a secret but definitive agreement to station nuclear weapons on Saudi soil, fitted to a new generation of Chinese (PRC)-supplied long-range (4,000 to 5,000km) ballistic missiles which would be under Pakistani command, but clearly with some form of joint Saudi-Pakistani command and control.

The new systems would be able to reach European and Indian targets, increasing Saudi political influence in Europe and giving Pakistan the strategic depth it needs to have a second-strike capability against Indian nuclear capabilities. This radically changes the balance of power in South Asia.

Highly-reliable GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily sources in Islamabad and Riyadh reported on October 21, 2003, that Saudi Arabia's effective ruler, Crown Prince and Deputy Prime Minister 'Abdallah bin 'Abd al-'Aziz al Sa'ud, reached the agreement with Pakistan Pres. Pervez Musharraf and Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali during the visit of the Saudi delegation to Pakistan October 18-20, 2003. The agreement is the culmination of a long and sustained series of Saudi requests to Pakistan. A significant, unreported one-on-one meeting between Pres. Musharraf and Crown Prince 'Abdallah in Kuala Lumpur, at the Organization for Islamic Conference (OIC) on October 15, 2003, was also significant in the process.

It was clearly the fact that the Saudi basing would give Pakistan the capability to credibly deter an Indian nuclear or conventional attack on Pakistan which was the decisive element for the Pakistani leadership. Pakistan's domestically-based nuclear capability is insufficient to deter the threat even of an overwhelming Indian military thrust into the country. However, the basing of an IRBM capability, with nuclear weapons, in Saudi Arabia, adds a complex second-strike capability to Pakistan's deterrence and bargaining power with India.

Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali arrived in Tehran on October 21, 2003, for a three-day visit, ostensibly about trade, but the Pakistani Government wished to use the visit to explain the Saudi-Pakistani deal with Iranian officials, in order to ensure that Iran did not see the new arrangement as a threat to Iran. Iran is conscious of the fact that the 1987 Saudi CSS-2 acquisition was specifically designed to deter Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia.

It was understood that, under the Saudi-Pakistani pact, the nuclear weapons deployed to Saudi Arabia would remain as Pakistani systems, and the new series of ballistic missiles - which would replace the existing Saudi CSS-2 missiles (2,800km+ range), provided by the PRC and based on the DF-3A - would be paid-for by Saudi Arabia while being marked as Pakistani systems. The new systems would have a range of at least 4,000km and possibly 5,000km.

Saudi Arabia acquired its CSS-2s in 1987, principally to counter potential threats from Iran. The Saudi systems, which were obsolescent even then, were fitted with conventional warheads, although it was believed that Saudi Arabia had developed chemical and/or biological warhead capabilities for the missiles. The Royal Saudi Air Force (Al Quwwat al Jawwiya al Malakiya as Sa'udiya) operates a total of 50 CSS-2 IRBMs, in two squadrons; one at al-Joffer, the other at Sulayel (the principal missile base). The CSS-2 is a road-transportable, liquid-fueled IRBM, and can be launched from either permanent launch pads or from portable launch stands, although the RSAF approach appears to be to base the systems at fixed sites.

It was understood that the new systems would replace the CSS-2s at al-Joffer and Sulayel. Ideally, according to the sources, the new systems would be solid-fuel missiles, although it was possible that a derivative of the DF-4 liquid-fueled system (4,750km range) could be obtained, surplus from PRC stocks as an interim measure. The DF-4 operates from fixed bases. No specific timetable was put on the proposed new deployment of Pakistani strategic systems in Saudi Arabia, but a DF-4 acquisition option could make the plan operational within a very short timeframe.

In about February 2002, Saudi workers began a major expansion program at Sulayel. By early March 2002, there were significant numbers of new buildings and fortified storage facilities. New facilities were also built at the nearby King Khalid Military City, to support the Sulayel expansion. New launch pads were created and, significantly, new fortified storage facilities were built for missiles which would be longer than the CSS-2s currently in service. Two underground facilities were also noted.

The implication of the Saudi-Pakistani deal is that it (a) gives Saudi Arabia more credibility and leverage in dealing with European states and the US; and (b) makes Saudi Arabia now a part of the threat matrix for India.

It was no coincidence that, during the three-day Saudi visit to Pakistan that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Sa'ud al-Faisal bin Abd al-Aziz Al-Sa'ud said in Islamabad on October 19, 2003, that Indian-Israel military cooperation was a "worrying element" which could unleash instability and arms race in the region. Speaking at a joint news conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, he addressed the recently-concluded defense supply agreement in Delhi among India, Israel and Russia, Prince Sa'ud said: "Indeed what we are hearing of this cooperation (Indo-Israel deal) is that it is aimed not at the good of the region, but to inflame the region, to further add to the arms race in the region." In the same context, he recalled how some Israeli think tanks demonstrated "similar sinister designs" in the Middle East concerning the "security of Israel". He observed: "It is a country of four-million or so people that believes its security extends from the Indus River to the Atlantic Ocean."

The Saudi mission to Islamabad - the first at this level since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US - demonstrated the extent of concern which the Saudi leadership felt about the India-Israel strategic relations which had also blossomed since 2001.

The Saudi Crown Prince held talks with Gen. Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali, and Pakistani official sources said that the visit was as a result of an invitation delivered to the Crown Prince recently by Pres. Musharraf's special envoy. However, Saudi sources said that the visit was as much as a result of Saudi wishes as Pakistani. The visit also resulted in a complete harmony of expressed views on all common foreign policy issues - including whether Pakistan should, or should not, supply peacekeepers to Iraq [the consensus was to wait for an Iraqi invitation] - and a statement that Saudi economic aid to Pakistan would increase from $65-million to $100-million a year "as a token of its appreciation for Pakistan's impressive economic performance over the last four years".

Crown Prince 'Abdullah on October 19, 2003, visited an exhibition of defense equipment in Islamabad, and was accompanied by the Pakistani President and Prime Minister. The extensive display and demonstrations were not, according to Pakistani sources, just for show. There was a direct interest by Saudi Arabia in Pakistani-built systems.

Significantly, however, there were now routine cooperative exercises underway between RSAF and Pakistan Air Force (PAF) units in joint asset protection - air defense - deployments. These, too, were more than routine, and were, according to sources, aimed at developing joint capabilities to defend the proposed new strategic missile facilities in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi-Pakistani nuclear weapons planning and cooperation has been underway for some years, but it had always been felt that Pakistani officials were resisting pressure from Riyadh to provide actual weapons to Saudi Arabia. [Even now, the formula addresses Saudi needs, but keeps the weapons in Pakistani hands, at least nominally and for some purposes.] However, the trail of events makes it clear that Saudi Arabia had consistently worked toward the acquisition of a nuclear capability, provided by Pakistan.

It will be recalled that on May 6-7, 1999, then-Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif escorted Saudi Minister of Defense & Aviation Prince Sultan bin 'Abd al-Aziz al-Saud on a visit to Pakistani nuclear research facilities and the manufacturing facilities for the Ghauri liquid-fueled strategic ballistic missile (a derivative of the DPRK NoDong-1) in Kahuta. This was the first and only visit by a foreign dignitary to the facilities, and only the third by a Pakistani head-of-government. The host was Dr Abdul Qadir Khan, at that time regarded as the "father" of the Pakistani nuclear capability. Prince Sultan at this time was known to have engaged in what were described by sources as "very substantive" discussions with Pakistani officials for the acquisition of both nuclear weapons and Ghauri MRBMs.

The Ghauri, with a range of only some 2,600km, was later to be bypassed, partly because of the range question; partly because it was liquid-fueled and not solid-fueled; and partly because of problems with the NoDong-1s being faced by its originator, the DPRK. Pakistani sources have said, however, that the Ghauri derivatives were likely to resume and were still viable.

Prince Sultan's visit to Pakistan was followed by a visit to Saudi Arabia in mid-September 2000 by a Pakistani strategic policy and nuclear delegation led by Dr Abdul Qadir Khan, Dr Ijaz Shafi Ghilani and Dr M. Younus But. They were guests of Prince Sultan, and at a speech on about September 20, 2000, Dr Abdul Qadir Khan thanked the Saudi Government for contributing to the success of the Pakistani nuclear weapons tests on May 28, 1998. That indicated a Saudi involvement in the Pakistani nuclear weapons program much earlier than Pakistani officials have generally acknowledged. [Saudi financial support for Pakistani nuclear research was, however, assumed even during the Zia ul-Haq era of the 1980s, but without any known understanding of a direct quid pro quo for Saudi Arabia.]

On October 15, 2003, Pres. Musharraf met in Kuala Lumpur with Crown Prince 'Abdallah at the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The meeting was not reported, and was a one-on-one affair. That night, Pres. Musharraf met with a number of Pakistani officials and Pakistani expatriates, including a number of scientists who had come especially to Kuala Lumpur from China. One GIS source made notes of Pres. Musharraf's remarks, which were not reported, and which were deemed to be private.

The source, who made the notes available to GIS, noted that the President said that he was encouraged and optimistic and that Pakistan was about the spread its wings on the world stage. He said that the world was looking for a rôle for Pakistan, and that it could contributing something which nobody else could. He said that Pakistan was at a crossroads and that it could decide whether it would accept this challenge for the ummah (Islamic world) and Islam.

Pres. Musharraf said that the situation in South Asia was changing, as a result of which Pakistan would not be disconcerted by India's stockpiling of arms. Pakistan, he said, would no longer be cowed in this manner.

By the grace of God, Pakistan was strong and getting stronger, Pres. Musharraf said, and would maintain its deterrence at all costs.

Meanwhile, the Government of Iran was itself maneuvering to continue its nuclear weapons development without a direct confrontation with the international community. On October 21, 2001, the clerical Government of Iran agreed with EU foreign ministers to suspend its disputed uranium enrichment program and sign an agreement allowing more comprehensive inspections of its nuclear sites by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). An unnamed Iranian official said: "We agreed to will suspend enrichment and sign the protocol" on tougher inspections. A European diplomat had earlier told Reuters news agency that Iran had agreed to halt uranium enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

Key Iranian opposition leader Dr Assad Homayoun, of the nationalist Azadegan Foundation, noted, in a report published in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily on September 25, 2003: "I believe that if the clerical Government, even under political, economic and technical pressures, decided to sign the New Safeguards Measures of IAEA, it would not ratify it. There would be many ways and means to escape from the watching eyes of IAEA, and the clerical Government will never abandon its drive to acquire the atomic bomb."

The new Saudi-Pakistan accord on nuclear weapons deployment provides continued pressure, as far as the Iranian clerical leaders are concerned, to continue their own nuclear weapons program. Indeed, they have committed so much of the national capability toward acquisition of nuclear weapons that it was unlikely that they would stop at this point, particularly given the amount of maneuvering room which the IAEA normally would provide. So the October 21, 2003, statement by Iran constituted the political maneuvering to which Dr Homayoun referred on September 25, 2003. IAEA head Mohamed al-Baradei also flew into Iran and said there on October 17, 2003, that Iranian officials had promised "full cooperation" with IAEA inspectors.

Iranian sources have said that the Iranian nuclear development programs - including the civil programs - were now scattered through so many sites around the country that it would be almost impossible for an IAEA inspection team to get to the most secret facilities in a short time.

The visit by Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali to Iran was ostensibly at the invitation of Iranian Pres. Seyed Mohammad Khatami. The Prime Minister was accompanied by Minister of Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Minister of Commerce Humayun Akhtar, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Nourez Shakoor and other senior officials, and was nominally to discuss the matter of natural gas imports from Iran. At present, three studies were being prepared on the proposed gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan. India had shown reservations on laying of pipeline through Pakistan and has engaged companies for making feasibility reports on deep-sea, shallow waters and offshore pipeline.

Meanwhile, Pakistan on October 14, 2003, fired a medium-range nuclear missile Hatf IV capable of targeting India, its third and last in the current round of testing which began 11 days earlier. The testing of the surface-to-surface Hatf IV or Shaheen 1, which has a range of 700km, from an undisclosed location was the second in six days.

And on October 21, 2003, Pakistan and the People's Republic of China began a joint naval exercise "to further develop bilateral cooperation in the defense sector". It was also the PRC's first naval exercise with any foreign country. The exercise began near the Shanghai coast, involving frontline warships, maritime aircraft and helicopters from both sides, including two Pakistani warships.

[Kuttan]

We need to start phrasing this as the membership of Pakistan in BOTH Coalitions in the War About Terrorism.

US-UK-TSP in "GOAT" (Global Offensive About Terror) (changed from "against" to accomodate Paki sensibilities)

TSP-KSA-Libya-NoK-PRC in "CoT"

"Crescent of Terror"

[Umrao]

I dont think US or International coalition should be worried about TSPakistan they are certified rational.

See the logical progression of the proliferation,
PRC TSP NK IRAN KSA.
the crescent is gradually becoming bigger and bigger to envelope the whole world.

SO TSP is a legitimate Super power because it is being co opted by only super power on the advice of forward thinking South Asian experts at the beck and call of GOTUS.

"The road to disarmament is from Pongyang to Islamabad via Bejing." Spinster 1998.

[ramana]

This KSA-TSP pact appears not well thought out. Isnt KSA now a legitimate target for all and sundry? Hasnt the KSA endangered the holy sites with this foolishness? So should the Royal family continue as the custodian of these sites?

[svinayak]

Originally posted by ramana:
This KSA-TSP pact appears not well thought out. Isnt KSA now a legitimate target for all and sundry? Hasnt the KSA endangered the holy sites with this foolishness? So should the Royal family continue as the custodian of these sites?

This is to create the political center of the sunni order. KSA and TSP together form a center but are seperated. Need to find how long this arrangement will work.
It may make them the target of lot of powerful countries but the idea of a world political center which can sit in UNSC or other world body to represent the 1B muslims is what they are after. This shows up in that israel report of OIC meeting of Mushy with fellow members.

[ramana]

A, while they may still be at that old game it looks to me it has gone too far with this dalliance with WMD stationing. Now KSA is a legitimate target for all- India, Israel, Europe, Russia and US. Inst that a tad bit foolish?

[TSJones]

There ain't gonna be no KSA nukes. Ya got that? If they wanna kill the goose that sold them the gold plated weapons system they have chosen a for-sure path. I don't expect any of you yahoos to believe me but let me tell you, we didn't sell them stuff like the latest and greatest awacs and F-15s just to have them proliferate nukes. So go ahead and doubt me, but I got the straight mo-jo. You heard it right here first.

[Kuttan]

I actually wonder - but Yossef Bodansky doesn't write disinfo. Wasn't he the first to write a book on bin Laden?

The alternative explanation here is that the Paki nuclear weapons have been in KSA for quite a long time - WITH US APPROVAL.

All this brings back the comment of General Flathead in late June 2002 when I was checking to see what had happened to suddenly make the Pakis meek, and India decide to withdraw troops, almost seeming to burst out laughing.

The comment as I recall was:

"And what of the Strategic Assets?"

"The Strategic Assets are with those who paid for them. And we all know who paid for them".

So if the above is true, then the transfer of weapons occurred before the end of June 2002.

Did the US actually get the weapons moved to KSA? That would seem rather foolhardy.... especially when Mossad hears about it.. But that would explain General Flathead's comment.

I just can't believe that the US would risk transfer of Paki nuclear bombs to another nutcase nation proved to have hosted pilots who fly into buildings - and with a fleet of F-15s to match.

Also, this latest action would seem extra-blatant, as in inviting the US to go kick the backsides of both TSP and KSA..

Something is VERY strange here. The other strange thing is the sudden rise in Foreign Exchange reserves right after the Paki nukes disappeared.

[kgoan]

Got to agree with TSJ.

Not much chance** of Saudia getting Pak nukes - not because the Paks would be sensible (matter of fact this is exactly the sort of "tactically brilliant" move they're famous for) - but because the Saudi's risk the possibility of the US cutting the throats of all 5000 princes without much ado.

But Bodansky does have credibility, (in my opinion). If I were to take a guess as to what he's saying, I'd be willing to bet that he's talking about the Paks (and their nukes) becoming players in the internal bunfight currently going on in Saudia.

**Outside possibility of some group financed by one of those Princes who mysteriously die of thirst, getting some components, say the precision electronics, while another group gets another set of components, etc.

But thats an outside chance, too much can go wrong. OTOH, bin Laden and friends have demonstrated a capability to coordinate widely separated and disparate groups to come together for a specific mission.

[JE Menon]

TSJ,

I'd like to believe you are right (no scratch that, I want to believe you are right), but I'm not so sure you are - not any more.

That the Saudis and the Paks have been doing this nuke shell game for some time now is self-evident. Recall that the father of US citizen Mansoor Ijaz, something of a closet jihadi, was a nuclear physicist and visited Saudi Arabia as far back as the early 1980s. Saudi diplomat Mohammed Khilewi warned about Saudi intentions in the early 1990s IIRC. The circumstantial evidence has been building up since.

For example, Crown Prince Abdullah did not visit Kahuta to discuss how not to proliferate or why they should not. He may have just been given a grand tour, sure, to show how well the fountainhead of pan-Islamic security was doing. But then note that even Pakistani prime ministers have not had that privilege. Benazir Bhutto for instance. Nor have any other Muslim leaders. Given that, I would say there's more than a smidgen of doubt on the intent issue.

You see the Saudis see it differently, they think the purchased the damned weapons systems from the US and that's all there is to it. Sure, they keep much of them in wraps and probably would fail to do anything seriously effective with them in case of war. But what if the Paks help them, after the US pulls out, with soldiers and support. And remember you did not hear this first from Borchgrave or Cordesmann, you heard it from some Mullah - can't remember who any more - who recently said that Abdullah and Musharraf agreed to precisely that.

I am sure that the US is keeping an eagle eye on the Saudis and have stuffed enough warnings down their throats to deter all except the determined. But the House of Saud is making is calculations based on its survival. They see talk of regime change, new Middle East order, dictators falling all around - and they wonder, hey, why should I foreclose my options if the US is going to democratise the country and put us out of business anyways. And then they look at North Korea, and how it has gotten away so far, and at Pakistan and how they've gotten away with their dealings with North Korea - at least so far.

The world is becoming a very dangerous place for ornery folk like you and me, my friend, who just want to have a great time and be left alone to have their Slimfast breakfast and their beer or their idly/dosa and their chai.

Still, I want you to be right on this one.

[shiv]

Originally posted by narayanan:


TSP-KSA-Libya-NoK-PRC in "CoT"

"Crescent of Terror"

How about Coalition Of International Terror against the US as an acronym that suggests the accusation that the group has agains the US

[JE Menon]

Shiv,

Surely, then, the US war against terrorism could be described as COITUS Interruptus?

[Kuttan]

In a good cause. We need some good BRFi analysis and discussion about this report:

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/25582.pdf

Far be it from me to bias the reader, but let me start by stating that someone who read it called it "garbage" and the author apparently didn't like that. Comments, please?