Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 31 March 2005

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SSridhar
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Post by SSridhar »

MuNNA can't do much more in nuke probe - Karamat
The United States should realise that Pakistan has extended maximum possible cooperation to the international effort to dismantle the Khan network of nuclear proliferators and cannot go beyond what it has already done, says Ambassador Jehangir Karamat.

“They should know that we cannot extradite Dr A. Q. Khan. They should not even talk about it,” said the former army chief, who now represents Pakistan in Washington.

Mr Karamat told a meeting of the Washington Policy Analysis Group that while the US administration appreciated Pakistan’s position on issues like nuclear proliferation and terrorism, there were people in the media and other places who continued to criticize Pakistan.

“They should deal with Pakistan as an ally and stop treating it as a target,” said the ambassador.

He also urged them to understand that America’s alliance with Pakistan has been beneficial to the fight against terror. “There may be individuals or individual groups who might have been involved in terrorism but their activities should not be exploited to claim that Pakistan or the Pakistani establishment is involved in such activities. We are not.”

Mr Karamat defended President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to confirm Dr Khan’s involvement in supplying nuclear technology to North Korea in a recent interview to a Japanese news agency.

“The purpose of this confirmation was to make it clear that Dr Khan had only given centrifuge technology and nothing beyond that because he did not have access to anything other than this technology.”

The ambassador said that Pakistan has been sharing the information it received from interrogating Dr Khan with the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency ever since the interrogation began.

“It’s Pakistani cooperation that allowed the US and the IAEA to bust the network…There’s no need to criticize us.”

The ambassador said that while such criticism did not affect the US administration, it did have a negative impact in the US Congress and hurt Pakistan.
Gerard
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Post by Gerard »

MUSHARRAF & THE US: THE FATAL ATTRACTION
A.Q.KHAN

34. The methods followed by Musharraf for hoodwinking the international community (to use the phrase of Maulana Fazlur Rahman) have again become evident in his recent admission in an interview to the Kyodo news agency of Japan that Dr.A.Q.Khan had supplied centrifuges for uranium enrichment to North Korea.

35. Musharraf had admitted the role of Khan in the supply of centrifuges and other material to Libya only after the British and American officials, acting jointly, had intercepted off the Italian coast a consignment of centrifuges manufactured by a Malaysian company at the instance of Khan. After Libya made a clean breast of the project, Musharraf came out with more details.

36. He admitted the role of Khan in the supply of centrifuges to Iran only after Teheran admitted this to inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Vienna, who found traces of enriched uranium in some of the centrifuges in the Iranian plant. The Iranian officials strongly denied US allegations that the presence of these traces indicated that Iran has already embarked on uranium enrichment. They contended that the traces seemed to have come from the plant of the suppliers---meaning Pakistan—from whom it had bought them second-hand.

37. Musharraf and other Pakistani authorities had for long been denying any nuclear or missile supply relationship with North Korea, even though Mrs.Benazir Bhutto under whose prime ministership it started had been talking about it.

38. Musharraf himself admitted the missile supply relationship in a press interview before a visit to South Korea two years ago, but he continued to deny any nuclear supply relationship with North Korea till now. He has now admitted that Khan did supply centrifuges to North Korea, but has insisted that Khan would have had no role in helping North Korea acquire a military nuclear capability since his expertise was confined to uranium enrichment.

39. Why did Musharraf find himself constrained to make this admission now? For many months, the IAEA had been demanding that Pakistan should hand over to it some of its old centrifuges from the Kahuta plant in order to enable it to compare them with the centrifuges in the Iranian plant to see whether the Iranian contention was correct.

40. Musharraf resisted this demand till March last, when Ms.Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, visited Pakistan. After the visit, Musharraf agreed to hand over some of the centrifuges to the IAEA. Media reports from Vienna indicate that the examination of the centrifuges handed over by Pakistan indicate that the Iranian contention was correct.

41. In the 1990s, Khan had got the centrifuges of the 1970 vintage in Kahuta replaced by new ones. Of the replaced old centrifuges, he supplied some to Iran and some to North Korea and allegedly some to Iraq of Saddam Hussein .

42. After the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, there were reports from reliable sources in Pakistan that before the US occupation, Khan had taken a plane to Damascus and airlifted from there to Pakistan some nuclear-related “material”, which had been moved by road from Baghdad to Damacus.

43. What were those material? According to some sources, those were second-hand centrifuges from Kahuta and documents relating to their assembling. It was said that the Saddam Hussein Government had not been able to install them and that they were lying in a godown. To prevent their falling into American hands, Khan managed to have them brought back to Pakistan via Damascus.

44. It is likely that the IAEA might ask Pakistan how many centrifuges were replaced in Kahuta and where did the replaced centrifuges go? Any detailed enquiry would have brought out not only their supply to Iran and North Korea, but also to Iraq.

45. In the hope of pre-empting a detailed enquiry, Musharraf has admitted the supply of some of the centrifuges to North Korea. He feels that while he could limit the damages, if any, to Pakistan’s relations with the US by admitting the supplies to North Korea, he may not be able to do so if the supply to Iraq is exposed. He is frantically trying to limit the enquiries to North Korea.

46. Unless the US takes Khan into its custody and interrogates him outside Pakistan, it might not be able to establish Khan’s relationship with Iraq and the details of the complicity of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment in the nuclear trade of Khan.
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Post by Tim »

This may be of some interest - a chronology of AQ Khan's network based on public sources.

http://www.CarnegieEndowment.org/static ... nology.pdf.
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Post by Gerard »

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Post by enqyoobOLD »

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13937596
Dutch court loses A Q Khan's legal files
Saturday, 10 September , 2005, 18:13
Amsterdam: The Amsterdam court, which sentenced the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme Abdul Qadeer Khan to four years in prison in 1983, has lost Khan's legal files and the court's vice-president suspects the CIA had a hand in the document's disappearance.


"Something is not right, we just don't lose things like that," judge Anita Leeser told Dutch news show NOVA on Friday.

"I find it bewildering that people lose files with a political goal, especially if it is on request of the CIA. It is unheard of," she added.

Khan, who admitted in 2004 that he had leaked nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, worked as an engineer in the Netherlands at Urenco, an uranium enrichment plant in the 1970s.

In 1983 he was sentenced in absentia, by judge Leeser, to four years in prison for stealing nuclear secrets about uranium enrichment. On appeal the verdict was quashed because of procedural errors and the Dutch government did not pursue the matter any further.

A month ago former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers said Khan was let go at the request of US intelligence services.

Leeser said that when she heard Lubbers, the disappearance of Khan's files at the Amsterdam courts archive fell into place for her.

She has asked to see the Khan case files several years ago but they had disappeared from the archives.

"Now I think somebody lost the files on purpose ... I think that there was some political influence at play nationally and internationally," she said.
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Post by Amber G. »

From NY Times:
TSP 's Musharraf Confirms Nuclear Exports
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said yesterday that he believed that a Pakistani nuclear expert who ran the world's largest proliferation ring exported "probably a dozen" centrifuges to North Korea to produce nuclear weapons fuel. He added, however, that after two years of interrogations there was still no evidence about whether the expert also gave North Korea a Chinese-origin design to build a nuclear weapon.

Multimedia Video Interview With Musharraf: bin Laden :eek:

General Musharraf's comments, which echo statements he made last month to Japanese reporters, were made in an interview a day before the United States was to reopen talks with North Korea about its nuclear program in Beijing.

The Pakistani leader's comments about the results of the interrogations of the expert, A. Q. Khan, a national hero who is under a loose form of house arrest in Islamabad, are significant because they tend to confirm the accusations American intelligence officials made against North Korea in 2002.

At that time, North Korean officials appeared to confirm that they had secretly started up a second nuclear program to build atomic weapons using uranium technology obtained from Mr. Khan's network, as an alternative to a plutonium program that was frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States. But ever since, North Korea has denied that a second, secret bomb program exists.

A dozen centrifuges would not be enough to produce a significant amount of bomb-grade uranium. But American officials say they would have enabled North Korea to copy the design and build their own.

The Bush administration has insisted that unless North Korea agrees to give up both programs - and agrees to a broad program of inspections - no comprehensive nuclear deal can be reached. North Korea has suggested it may be willing to give up its older plutonium program, based at a huge nuclear complex located at Yongbyon, but has reiterated its denials that it has hidden centrifuges to make bomb-grade uranium.

In a wide-ranging discussion in New York with three journalists from The New York Times, General Musharraf also discussed Pakistan's tentative diplomatic openings toward Israel and its efforts to track down Al Qaeda leaders. He said that the opening to Israel could flourish "in case there is forward movement" on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but he said, "this is by no means recognition of Israel."

Despite protests in Pakistan about the new initiative, he insisted that his move had met little opposition among mainstream Muslims in Pakistan, and he is to address a Jewish group for the first time during his visit here. "What is the harm if I interacted with the Jewish Congress, knowing their influence here?" he said.

He said it was possible that Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, is still moving between remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan four years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. "I will not negate entirely, with confidence, that he is not there," he said. "But I will never accept anybody who says with confidence that he is there." He said later that he often asks, "Do you have intelligence, have you heard him?"

Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts are a particularly sensitive subject for General Musharraf because Pakistan has been accused by some intelligence officials of doing a lackluster job of pursuing Qaeda suspects, stepping up pressure on them when it suits Pakistani interests but turning down the pressure at other times. He rejected that charge, saying Mr. bin Laden's power is reduced, no matter where he is.

"I do not think he can influence, because he is on the run, hiding," General Musharraf said. If Mr. bin Laden is on the Pakistan-Afghan border, he is switching sides "wherever he sees danger," General Musharraf added.

He rejected arguments that Pakistan was halfhearted in its efforts to root out Al Qaeda and remnants of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan until the American-led war there in 2001. "We have almost eliminated them from our cities," he said. "We have caught about 700 of them, and we have broken their back in the mountains." The groups no longer operate in the valleys of the Afghan border area, he said, "because we have occupied them."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, also speaking to reporters yesterday at The New York Times, praised General Musharraf for working in three areas, and said the United States would be supportive: helping to pursue members of Al Qaeda, creating "diplomatic space" for operating by reaching out to India and Israel, and working to improve education and the economy to discourage militancy. "There are parts of Pakistan that are extremely poor where you get breeding grounds for this kind of extremism," she said, and the United States would help him deal with those.

General Musharraf said that, in a meeting he had yesterday with Ms. Rice, he asked her to move toward a free-trade agreement with Pakistan. That is likely to meet some resistance in Congress, which derailed efforts by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks to aid Pakistan by lifting restrictions on textile imports.

But he said he made no demands for an agreement that would match the Bush administration's offer to help India develop a civilian nuclear power program. India and Pakistan have refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and that has prevented most forms of nuclear cooperation with the United States.

In his discussion of Mr. Khan, General Musharraf said that two years of questioning of Mr. Khan - which the Pakistanis insisted they would do themselves, rather than allowing the United States to question him - a critical question had not been resolved: Did the scientist give the same bomb design to North Korea and Iran that investigators found in Libya, when it dismantled its uranium program.

"I don't know," he said. "Whether he passed these bomb designs to others - there is no such evidence."
pran
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Post by pran »

There was new just after Xerox Khan affair hit the headlines that his daughter took off for UK with some incriminating documents to absolve her father in case Musharraf tries to get him terminated.

Then Xerox Khan has a heart attack and he is house arrest without anyone confirming he is dead or alive from the foreign media.

Any follow up what happened to the files ? It seems what the dutch ex-PM said holds true even now.
Vivek_A
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Post by Vivek_A »

So mushy confirms that TSP's nukes are of a lizard design?
SaiK
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Post by SaiK »

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... index.html

Khan confessed in early 2004 that he had spread sensitive technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea ... to confirm the accusations American intelligence officials made against North Korea in 2002 that Pyongyang had secretly launched a second nuclear program to build atomic weapons using uranium technology obtained from Khan's network....American officials say they would have enabled North Korea to build their own weapon based on the Chinese design.

The designs apparently were based on a Chinese weapon tested in the 1960s and later leaked to Pakistan. Last year, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi agreed to give up his country's nuclear weapons program.

Musharraf told the Times that two years of questioning of Khan had not resolved whether the scientist gave the same Chinese bomb design to North Korea and Iran.

"I don't know," he told the newspaper. "Whether he passed these bomb designs to others -- there is no such evidence."
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Post by jrjrao »

Iran says it is eager to continue the good work started by AQ Khan and China.

Iran offers nuclear know-how to Islamic states
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Post by kashmal »

A final word on Pakistan, which is fast becoming the number one nuclear problem in the world. A quasi-failing nuclear State, Pakistan is also unable or unwilling to become a responsible nuclear actor. Pakistani actors have shown their willingness to transfer nuclear expertise to several State and non-State entities. Pakistan is the missing link between a nuclear Asia and a nuclear Middle East. If things do not change, there will come a time where the denuclearization of that country one way or the other will become an option to be seriously considered.
http://www.eusec.org/tertrais.htm
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Post by arun »

[
From Patriot to Proliferator

The myth of a Pakistani scientist as his nation's savior long protected him. It took his peddling of atomic know-how to shred it.

By Douglas Frantz
Times Staff Writer

September 23, 2005

In spring 2000, Lt. Gen. Syed Mohammad Amjad was in his office at Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau when one of his senior investigators delivered the report he was dreading.

The bureau had been created six months earlier to root out corruption among bureaucrats, politicians and the business elite. Amjad, a career army officer known for his integrity, was given authority to arrest anyone.

The investigator had been quietly verifying the contents of a 700-page dossier on Abdul Qadeer Khan, the scientist whose reputation as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb made him the country's most revered figure.

It was clear that Khan was living far beyond his modest government salary, the investigator reported. He had stashed $8 million in banks in Pakistan; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Switzerland, acquired seven expensive houses, paid monthly stipends to 20 journalists to burnish his image and collected kickbacks on purchases by the government lab he ran.

Corruption was easy to prove, the investigator said, but pursuing Khan would entangle the young bureau in a political struggle it was likely to lose. The scientist was shielded by a largely self-constructed myth that he had almost single-handedly ensured Pakistan's national security by building a nuclear arsenal to counter India's.

"My humble suggestion is not to open a case at this stage," the investigator told Amjad, according to a person who attended the meeting. Amjad reluctantly agreed.

Khan's protective wall did not collapse for nearly four more years.

In February 2004, facing rising international pressure, the government forced Khan to confess that he had run a highly profitable black-market operation that sold nuclear secrets and technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. His activities made him the single most important figure in the spread of atomic weapons beyond a small clutch of nuclear states.

Much about Khan's network has been discovered since then. Still, mystery surrounds what turned a proud and ambitious man from patriot to proliferator.

Interviews with more than 30 of Khan's friends, former associates and adversaries in the U.S., Europe and South Asia turned up a varied list of theories about his actions. Defenders portrayed Khan as a patriot who stole secret European nuclear designs out of determination to protect his country from archrival India. To critics, he was a nuclear jihadist devoted to payback for real and imagined grievances suffered by Muslims. Still others saw a tragic figure seduced by his own belief that his scientific contributions put him above the law.

"He believed that Muslim countries had been thwarted over the years while others, like Israel and India, were allowed freer rein," said retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a defense analyst in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. "From a Western perspective, he cheated in stealing designs, but from his point of view, he did what was necessary to achieve his goal for the country."

Khan became the public face of Pakistan's nuclear weapons project, a role he embraced and exploited. His bank accounts grew fat. As streets and schools were named for him, he lobbied for more honors and undermined rivals. Along the way he grew reckless, evading global restrictions that had largely prevented the spread of nuclear weapons technology for three decades and forcing a reevaluation of how to halt its flow in the future.

"He started out on an antiIndia track," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physicist at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University and a longtime Khan critic. "Selling nuclear stuff came later, when he developed a compulsion to be rich and powerful."

Whatever turned Khan into a rogue scientist, the consensus is that in the beginnning, he was motivated by nationalism. He embraced that cause after Pakistan's traumatic defeat in a 1971 war with India, which cut the country in half. East Pakistan became the independent country of Bangladesh.

Khan later described to his biographer how he had watched scenes on television of captured Pakistani soldiers being kicked and caned by Indians while he was thousands of miles away, finishing his doctorate in metallurgy in Europe.

"All he thought of was to make Pakistan so strong that it would never have to face such a trauma again," wrote Zahid Malik in his 1992 authorized biography, "Dr. A.Q. Khan and the Islamic Bomb."

Khan soon found a way to help.

Early Years

When A.Q. Khan walked into the Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory, or FDO, in Amsterdam on May 1, 1972, he was 36 years old, tall and slender with a strong nose, square chin and a broad forehead beneath dark hair.

"He was very friendly and humble," said Frits Veerman, a technical photographer who shared a small office at the company with Khan. "He was enthusiastic from the start and interested in all the workers and what they were doing."

Khan was born in Bhopal, in British India, on April 27, 1936. As a boy of 11, he witnessed the communal violence generated by partition of the colony into India and Pakistan. He spoke later of seeing trains packed with the corpses of Muslims killed fighting Hindus.

In 1952, Khan's father, a schoolteacher, decided it was time for the family to migrate to Pakistan. A minor incident would stay with the 16-year-old, helping create what a number of people who know him described as a sense of inferiority that fueled his future actions.

"I had been traveling with a pen that my brother gave me when I passed my exams, and just as I was crossing out of India, a border guard reached toward me and snatched it from my pocket," Khan told a Pakistani interviewer years later. "It was something I'll never forget."

The family settled in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, and as he grew up, Khan displayed an aptitude for science. He graduated in engineering from the University of Karachi with good enough marks to be accepted for postgraduate work in Europe.

He earned a master's degree at the Technological University of Delft in the Netherlands and a doctorate in 1972 from Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. His advisor at Leuven, who would later describe Khan as a fair student with a great knack for making friends, arranged his job in Amsterdam at FDO.

It was the start of a pattern: Khan would always be a better self-promoter than scientist, and he would progress by skillfully combining the two.

Khan was hired to work on an FDO contract with Urenco, a consortium created in 1971 by the British, Dutch and German governments to develop a new generation of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium for Europe's nuclear power industry.

Centrifuges are cylindrical machines linked by the thousands in cascades. They spin at ultra-high speeds for months on end, transforming uranium gas into enriched uranium, which contains more fissionable material than uranium in its natural state. Low-enriched uranium is used to generate power; simple adjustments increase enrichment to the higher levels used for nuclear weapons.

The European centrifuge research was classified as secret. Urenco's cutting-edge designs and operating plans were kept in secure areas at its main plant, a fenced complex in the Dutch town of Almelo, about 15 miles from the border with Germany.

Complete background checks were mandatory for prospective employees who were not British, Dutch or German. But a later report by the Dutch government said Khan was hired without the required review because his assignment was in an area classified only as restricted and because he said he wanted to become a citizen of the Netherlands. He never followed through on the request for citizenship, and friends doubt he ever intended to pursue it.

Hired to evaluate metal for centrifuge components in Amsterdam, he was nevertheless at Almelo within a week, consulting with engineers working on the centrifuge itself.

Stealing the Fire

As Khan was finishing his education and beginning his career in Europe, dramatic events were unfolding back home in Pakistan.

Within days of surrendering in the war with India on Dec. 16, 1971, Gen. Yahya Khan resigned in disgrace as Pakistan's leader. The military appointed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a fiery populist, president in his place.

Bhutto had written in his 1967 autobiography that Pakistan needed nuclear weapons to stand against India.

About a month after taking power, he summoned the country's 50 top scientists to a secret gathering where he spoke emotionally about the shame of losing East Pakistan. The time had come, he argued, to build the bomb.

"He had great charisma and he really moved those people," Khaled Hasan, who attended the meeting as Bhutto's press secretary, said in an interview. "They cheered him and they said they could do it. Everyone believed in Bhutto."

The nation had a small research reactor, and Canada had just finished a plutonium reactor to generate electricity in Karachi. Otherwise, Pakistan had neither the scientists nor the infrastructure.

The urgency of fulfilling Bhutto's mandate increased dramatically on May 18, 1974, when India tested its first nuclear device.

Pakistani diplomats and agents in Europe, Canada and the U.S. were already trying to buy technology to make a bomb. But Khan had to take the initiative to get noticed.

Not long after India tested its atomic weapon, Khan wrote two letters to Bhutto, offering his services, according to the Malik biography and two of Khan's former associates.

Khan was still making regular visits from Amsterdam to the Almelo plant, and in October 1974 he was sent to work temporarily in a building there called the "brain box."

Almelo had shifted from working with the Dutch centrifuge to gearing up to produce a new and advanced Germandesigned machine. The secret plans for the German prototype were kept in the brain box. Khan, despite the lack of proper security clearance, was given the job of translating sections of the design from German to Dutch.

For 16 key days, he worked with the classified plans. He took documents home on occasion so that his Dutch-speaking wife, Hendrina, could fine-tune his translations.

Throughout that period, Khan had almost unfettered access to the technology to enrich uranium, from production plans and design information to a list of Urenco subcontractors.

Co-workers later told Dutch authorities that they often saw Khan in other areas of the plant during his many visits to Almelo; one described him carrying a writing pad in the production areas. But the person who became most suspicious was his closest friend, Frits Veerman, the photographer.

Veerman was a frequent guest at the modest two-story row house in the Amsterdam suburb of Zwanenburg where Khan and his wife lived with their young daughters.

That fall, after Khan's assignment in the brain box, Veerman was eating fried chicken at Khan's home when he noticed a stack of blueprints on a table in a corner of the living room. A closer look after dinner shocked him.

"I could see these were very secure drawings for the ultra-centrifuge," Veerman said in a recent interview. "They should never have left the office. I did not want to ask Abdul why he had them."

Eventually, Bhutto responded to Khan's letters. He invited the scientist to meet him when Khan planned to be in Pakistan at the end of 1974, a former aide to Bhutto said. Pakistan was concentrating on building a plutonium-based bomb — largely because it already had the Canadian-supplied plutonium reactor — but Khan urged Bhutto to consider a bomb that used enriched uranium.

By then, Khan was already well on his way to secretly acquiring the plans needed for enrichment.

It took a year for Dutch authorities to take action against Khan.

In October 1975, security authorities grew suspicious after learning that Khan had been asking questions about nuclear weapons at an industry exhibition in Switzerland. In response, the Ministry of Economic Affairs ordered him transferred away from centrifuge work, the Dutch report says.

Dutch security wanted to arrest Khan, but first they contacted the CIA, with whom they worked closely during the Cold War. The U.S. asked the Dutch to back off.

"Washington requested the Dutch services to inform them fully, but not to take any action so that they could follow Mr. Khan and try to find out what network was developing," Ruud Lubbers, minister of economic affairs at the time and later prime minister, told NHK, the Japanese public broadcaster, in a program that aired last month. "So for quite some time, in fact, it was known."

The transfer probably tipped off Khan. On Dec. 15, 1975, he and his family left for Pakistan, saying they were visiting relatives. He never returned to his job, first calling in sick, then officially resigning March 1, 1976. He had found a new calling.

Building the Bomb

Back in Pakistan, Khan met again with Bhutto and argued that the process to create enriched uranium was faster than that for plutonium and easier to conceal, according to Khan's statements and other people with knowledge of the conversations.

Bhutto decided to pursue both paths and ordered army engineers to build an enrichment plant for Khan near Kahuta, about 20 miles southeast of Islamabad. Khan would report only to Bhutto and would have a blank check to buy equipment. He turned to the list of Urenco contractors, tapping old colleagues and finding new ones.

Veerman was one of the first to hear from him. At the end of January 1976, Khan's wife returned to Zwanenburg to collect the family's belongings. Khan wrote Veerman asking him to escort her to the physics lab so she could get a box of materials he had left behind.

Veerman declined to help, but Khan followed up with a blunter letter. "Very confidentially, I request that you help us," he wrote, according to a copy of the letter provided by Veerman. He asked for information about several aspects of centrifuge design as well as specific components, adding, "Frits, these are very urgently required, without which the research would come to a standstill."

Khan also tried to recruit the best of Pakistan's scientists and countrymen living abroad. He promised good salaries and free housing if they joined what he described in a letter to a Pakistani in Canada as "the elite of the country."

In 1983, a Dutch court convicted Khan in absentia of trying to steal classified data, based on letters he had written to two former colleagues seeking confidential information. The verdict was overturned by an appeals court because Khan had not been served properly with notice of the charges.

Khan claimed the reversal exonerated him. "The information I had asked for was ordinary technical information available in published literature for many decades," he said in a speech later.

As late as 1986, Dutch authorities agreed a second time to overlook Khan's illegal activities at the request of the CIA, according to Lubbers. A CIA analysis that year had estimated that Khan's laboratory was enriching uranium to 93%, enough for a powerful bomb. But Washington did not want to anger Pakistan because it was serving as a conduit for guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan.

Khan's success had led to the Kahuta facility being named for him, testament that he had eclipsed Munir Ahmad Khan, the head of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the architect of the plutonium project. But his role in the weapons program was always less important than the myth that surrounded him. Although he cast himself as a brilliant all-around nuclear scientist, former associates said his skills were restricted to metallurgy and uranium enrichment, and that he played no role in weapons design or assembling the bomb. Munir Khan remained bitter until his death in 1999, warning several times that his rival's freewheeling ways would cause trouble for Pakistan.

Through most of the 1980s, Khan's patron was Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who had ousted Bhutto, then prime minister, and imposed martial law in July 1977. Two years later, Zia ordered Bhutto hanged.

Zia died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, and Benazir Bhutto, the Harvard-educated daughter of the late prime minister, herself became prime minister after elections.

Four years earlier, Bhutto had told American audiences that she opposed nuclear weapons. Now the military worried that she would abandon the program. Khan initially courted the favor of the prime minister. He invoked her father's patronage and asked her to oust Munir Khan and install him instead as head of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, according to two former senior Pakistani officials.

When Bhutto rebuffed him, he shifted his loyalty to her chief adversaries, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the hard-line army chief of staff, and Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the president. A few months later, the president pinned the country's second-highest medal on Khan for his contributions to the nuclear program.

In August 1990, at Beg's urging, the president used his authority to dismiss Bhutto. Later that year, in a speech at the military-run National University of Science and Technology, Khan boasted that he had repeatedly asked Beg to get rid of Bhutto because she was hindering the nuclear program, Hassan Abbas, a former senior Pakistani police official, wrote in his 2005 book, "Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror."

By the early 1990s, however, Khan was outliving his usefulness. He had achieved his goal of enriching uranium and faced being pushed aside, Abbas said in an interview.

"A.Q. Khan knew that the bomb was essentially done and he was out of a job," Abbas said.

Doling Out His Wealth

At that time, Khan lived in a comfortable villa on Margalla Road, Islamabad's most affluent neighborhood. The enclave had a swimming pool and a large garden where Khan liked to feed the monkeys. Khan gave money to charities and to people who might help him, including journalists, recycling his wealth to hedge against being marginalized.

"Khan loved to be flattered," said Hoodbhoy, the nuclear physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University. "Say a nice thing to him and he'd dip into his deep, deep pocket."

Few seemed to begrudge Khan his money. They assumed that, like many other high-level bureaucrats, he was skimming from contracts and taking kickbacks. But it was thought to be only a small percentage of the money being spent on a project that was a source of great national pride.

Some of his wealth, however, was coming from elsewhere.

In 1987, Khan and two middlemen who had helped Pakistan build its bomb had sold centrifuge components and designs to Iran, which was embarking on its own secret nuclear program. The deal was finalized at a meeting in Dubai by two of Khan's associates and three Iranians, one of whom was identified this week by an exile group as Mohammad Eslami, at the time a top official of the elite Revolutionary Guards. It is the first known transaction in what would mushroom into the world's largest private proliferation network.

Investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog based in Vienna, have been unraveling the network's trail since Khan's confession in 2004. Earlier this year, they turned up the first evidence of the meeting in Dubai at which the 1987 deal was clinched, but uncertainties remain.

Among them is why Khan would have helped Iran. Beg, who sought an alliance with Iran, might have encouraged the sale, but the timing of the first transaction predates his taking over as army chief of staff and he has denied authorizing it.

Others thought Khan's patriotism had been augmented by Muslim pride.

Benazir Bhutto said Khan seemed to have adopted a religious side when she encountered him after she was returned to office in 1993.

"My first impression of him was that he was a nationalist," Bhutto said in an interview. "By the time I returned to office, I felt that he was an Islamist. Something made him change."

Khan's newfound religion coincided with a second big order for centrifuge designs and parts from Iran, in 1994, which was worth about $8 million. The deal marked a turning point for the network and its boss.

Khan bought an apartment in Dubai, an ideal spot from which to run the network because of its central location and lax customs controls. But at home, his role in the nuclear program diminished. In spring 1998, with Khan's role essentially played out, the biggest event in Pakistan's nuclear history nearly took place without him.

In mid-May, India detonated five nuclear devices in its first public tests since 1974. Pakistan was determined to reply in kind.

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission had supervised simulated tests of nuclear weapons and was responsible for the design and construction of the country's atomic devices, but Khan argued that his lab had carried out its own simulations and should conduct the actual tests. Khan lost and it was decided that the commission would handle the live tests on May 28 and 30.

To placate Khan, technicians from his lab were allowed to help with preparations and he was invited to the test site in southwestern Pakistan. There, he pushed his way into the pictures and grabbed the mantle "father of the bomb" with both hands.

The five nuclear tests made Khan a hero to Muslims everywhere, and he was embraced more fervently than ever at home.

Even as the adulation rose, Khan was expanding his sales of Pakistan's most treasured nuclear secrets. He was arranging the sale of an off-the-shelf atomic bomb factory to Libya and striking a deal to provide enrichment technology to North Korea.

Given the blank check with which he had dealt in the black market to help build Pakistan's nuclear weapons for 20 years, some see Khan's deepening involvement in trafficking as perfectly predictable.

Graham Allison, a former Clinton administration arms control official, said: "You don't find people of integrity who operate in that zone."

The Long Fall

In early 2000, Khan summoned Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist, to the lab at Kahuta to rage about Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had taken control of the country in a coup the previous October.

Musharraf had had the gall to cut funding for the lab's program to develop missiles based on the North Korean designs, Khan told him. "Young man, he is trying to appease the Americans by stopping my missile program," Khan said.

Two former senior military officers close to Musharraf said the new Pakistani leader was actually trying to assert control over Pakistan's sprawling nuclear establishment, particularly Khan's operation. But Musharraf had to proceed cautiously because of Khan's enormous popularity and his own tenuous grasp on power.

Amjad's inquiry at the National Accountability Bureau did not lead to Khan's prosecution, and an investigation of two trips Khan made to Dubai later in 2000 also was inconclusive. But Musharraf thought he had enough evidence to take some action.

In March 2001, Musharraf removed Khan as head of the lab and forbade him to set foot inside Kahuta again. He softened the blow by appointing Khan as a presidential advisor.

"Musharraf didn't want a domestic backlash, and he didn't want to belittle him," said the former military officer, who was involved in the decision.

Khan remained defiant. He continued to expand his black-market dealings while denying that he had peddled nuclear technology.

In an interview in fall 2001 for "Stealing the Fire," a documentary about the spread of nuclear technology, Khan denied ever helping anyone other than Pakistan obtain nuclear equipment or weapons.

"We have not indulged in any proliferation," he said, according to a transcript of the session provided to the Los Angeles Times by the film's producers, John Friedman and Eric Nadler. "You cannot buy nuclear weapons. You cannot get a nuclear weapon on a platter."

That, however, was precisely what Khan was offering Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi. In an agreement reached in 1997, Khan had promised to provide Libya with a complete bomb factory, from uranium enrichment to nuclear warhead. The price tag was $100 million.

But even after he was demoted, Khan was powerful enough to continue using Pakistani government aircraft to fly nuclear goods to Libya.

In the end, Khan and his network were put out of business by one of their own customers, a man long regarded as a terrorist who now wanted to be accepted by the international community.

On Dec. 19, 2003, after months of secret negotiations with British and U.S. officials, Kadafi agreed to abandon his chemical, biological and nuclear programs. As part of the deal, Libya turned over records that directly tied Khan to the sale of nuclear technology and a warhead design.

Musharraf negotiated Khan's final surrender: The scientist would confess on television to unspecified proliferation in exchange for keeping his wealth and strict confinement to his home.

Mir, the journalist, met the defeated scientist at his government office a few days before he began his house arrest in February 2004. Khan railed that U.S. and Pakistani intelligence had caused his troubles, and he lashed out at Musharraf, predicting that he would do the Americans' bidding again by turning over Osama bin Laden just before the U.S. elections in November of that year.

"He thought that nobody could touch him because he is a hero," Mir said. "It was beyond his expectations that Musharraf could arrest him. That shock destroyed his mental health."

*

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Building a centrifuge

The network organized by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan touched many points of the globe. It gathered equipment and ex-pertise in a number of countries, generally without the knowledge of their governments, for an off-the-shelf nuclear arms factory for Libya. Parts were obtained for centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium for generating nuclear power or building weapons.

--

Parts and countries of origin

Ring magnets: Pakistan

Noncorrosive pipes and valves: Pakistan; South Africa; Switzerland; Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Aluminum or maraging steel: Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey

Flow-forming or balancing equipment: Pakistan, South Africa, Switzerland, South Korea

End cap and baffle: Pakistan; Malaysia; Dubai, U.A.E.

Vacuum pumps: Pakistan, South Africa

Power supply: Pakistan; Dubai, U.A.E.; Turkey

--

Source: Center for Nonproliferation Studies

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A shop for nuclear goods

The full extent of Abdul Qadeer Khan's role in spreading nuclear technology is not known, but reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency and interviews with diplomats and intelligence officials show his network aided the following countries:

Iran

The network provided centrifuge designs and components to Tehran after a meeting in 1987. Iran also bought a list of companies in Europe that could sell it technology.

In 1994 Iran purchased designs and components for advanced centrifuges and was promised additional assistance by the Pakistani scientist and his associates.

IAEA officials say privately that Khan's assistance cut years off Iran's efforts to enrich uranium.

North Korea

The nuclear weapons that the U.S. suspects North Korea possesses use plutonium. Khan's expertise is in enriching uranium, so it is unlikely that he helped the North build its suspected weapons.

But the U.S. has accused North Korea of developing a second method of building nuclear weapons based on enriched uranium technology supplied by Khan.

New information from a Pakistani military official indicates that Khan shipped centrifuges to North Korea as early as June 1998 aboard a Pakistani air force plane. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged last August that Khan had provided centrifuges and components to Pyongyang.

Libya

After meetings in 1997, Khan became the principal supplier of nuclear technology to Libya. The network promised to build a complete bomb factory for Tripoli and even provided designs for a nuclear warhead.

International inspectors who visited Libya in early 2004 after it gave up its program found components for thousands of centrifuges, plans for assembly lines and designs for the warhead, but they said Libya was many years from developing a weapon.



L.A.Times
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US for Khan to verify N.Korean centrifuges

Post by dwaipayan »

US for Khan to verify N.Korean centrifuges

http://www.newsinsight.net/nati2.asp?re ... tg=Defence

21 September 2005: US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, and WMD experts want Pakistan’s disgraced scientist, A.Q.Khan, to authenticate the uranium centrifuges he sold to North Korea, following the North Korean decision to abandon its nuclear weapons programme in return for economic aid, security guarantees, and a light water reactor, but the Pakistan government may not release him from its custody.

While diplomatic sources said that enough pressure was building on Pakistan to quietly hand over Khan to the CIA so that he could make a physical inspection of the centrifuges in North Korea, that may not be immediately possible because North Korea is determined not to give international access to its atomic facilities until some progress is made on the recent agreement.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies want nuclear inspection at the supply and destination levels to proceed simultaneously and quickly, because there is fear that North Korea could step back from its agreement to dismantle its weapons’ programme, and since it will take an year for the agreement to bear fruit, the US wants all the verification completed beforehand.

Alternatively, North Korea could send its centrifuges to a neutral third country for inspection, but US officials don’t expect North Korea to immediately agree to this, so the likely interim arrangement is for the CIA to interrogate Khan in Pakistan on specifics of the centrifuges sold to North Korea, but Pakistani objections are coming in the way.

Sources said that China informed Pakistan at least a month ago about the impending deal with North Korea, and it is after this that president Parvez Musharraf admitted of Khan selling centrifuges to North Korea, but he may not immediately agree to give up Khan to CIA custody so it can arrange for him to physically verify his sales.

“Very likely, Pakistan will quietly hand over A.Q.Khan to the CIA, so that the verification process can be completed,” said a diplomat. “It may begin with the CIA being given limited access to him, but once the inspection becomes bulky, and impossible to be remote-controlled from Pakistan, then Khan will be surrendered.”
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Post by Gerard »

AQ Khan being kept in total isolation, claims US magazine

The Atlantic Monthly | November 2005

The Wrath of Khan

How A. Q. Khan made Pakistan a nuclear power—and showed that the spread of atomic weapons can't be stopped
by William Langewiesche
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Post by Arun_S »

After the explosion, Dr Khan Began to face serious trouble because of old rivalries with the scientists of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. It was the Commission that had been given the control of the Chagai test.
all in this forum have always known that first round of Chagai that fizzed were AQ Khan's Uranium based N bomb. The fizzle greatly alarmed TSP brass and they had to procure ready N warhead from China to preserve their H&D (recall that TSP COAS had to dash to China after the first test for the purpose). Obviously Dr Khan began to face serious trouble from that point :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:. So what is new in the report??
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Post by Leonard »

Posted in Full --- Difficult to Retrieve Data from Pioneer Archives


Iran's nuclear proliferation


G Parthasarathy

PV Narasimha Rao and Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee displayed statesmanship, transcending political differences, to defeat a Pakistani move to get India condemned for alleged human rights violations in J&K at the United Nations Human Rights Commission, in 1994. Our then Ambassador to UN Offices in Geneva, Mr Satish Chandra, recalls the role played by Iran in that debate in the UN. His Iranian counterpart told him explicitly that if the Pakistan Resolution condemning India was put to vote, Iran would back Pakistan. When it became clear, however, that the Pakistan Resolution lacked requisite support, Iran made a virtue of necessity and advised Pakistan not to call for a vote.




India and Iran supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in Afghanistan. They share a common interest that landlocked Afghanistan is not subject to Pakistani economic blackmail. Iran benefits by transit of Indian goods to Russia and Central Asia. But Indian and Iranian interests do not always coincide. Iran, unlike Indonesia and Algeria, repeatedly backs resolutions in the Organisation of Islamic Conference that condemn alleged human rights abuses by us in Jammu and Kashmir and echo Pakistani views on J&K.



This happens despite the consistent backing that India gives Iran, by opposing Western sponsored resolutions that condemn human rights violations by the Iranian Government. Iran voiced serious concern and was critical of our May 1998 nuclear tests. When Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, Iran found reasons of national security to justify the Pakistani action. Iran also moved a resolution in the UN earlier this year seeking universal compliance with the provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) despite objections by us. Voicing support for greater Islamic representation, Iran declined to support India's candidature for Permanent Membership of the Security Council.



Should India automatically support nonaligned countries disregarding its own national interests on every issue? Every nonaligned country except Bhutan and Mauritius voted against us during the Bangladesh crisis in 1971. The position was no different when it came to voting on American backed Pakistani proposals to declare South Asia a nuclear weapons free zone. South Africa led the chorus of condemnation against us after our nuclear tests and became the first nonaligned movement Chairman to raise the Kashmir issue at a nonaligned Summit. Even today the 'New Agenda Coalition' spearheaded by South Africa and Egypt demands that India should sign the NPT. India, Pakistan and Israel did not accede to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968. They were, therefore, not required to place their nuclear facilities under international safeguards administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). All three countries possess nuclear weapons, without violating any international commitment or obligation. Iran signed the NPT and was required to place all its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards. In 2003, the IAEA received substantive and irrefutable evidence that Iran had violated its commitments under the NPT. From 1987 onwards, Iran secretly undertook the construction of facilities to enrich uranium. Pakistan provided the centrifuges and designs for the enrichment facilities to Iran by its disgraced nuclear scientist, Dr AQ Khan.



The clandestine development of these nuclear enrichment facilities was a violation of Iran's obligations under the NPT. Under Article XII.C of the Statute of the IAEA, this 'non-compliance' with NPT safeguards provisions has to be reported by the Board of the IAEA to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. This report was not filed by the IAEA because Iran agreed in November 2004 to suspend "all tests or production at any uranium conversion installation" pending the conclusion of an agreement with three European Union powers (EU3) - Britain, France and Germany. Just one day before the EU3 was scheduled to present its proposals to Iran, the Iranian Government announced that it would resume uranium conversion activities at its Isfahan plant. The IAEA Board thereafter decided by a vote of 22 to one with 11 abstentions (including Russia and China) to refer Iran to the UN Security Council as required by the Statute of the IAEA, after further discussions, now scheduled for November 2005. India voted in favour of this resolution.



After making some noises that it would consider reviewing its energy ties with India, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said: "I believe friends should not be judged by a single action. Iran enjoys friendly relations with India." While India has signed a long-term contract with Iran for the supply of LNG, it also has similar arrangements with countries like Qatar. Iranian threats of curtailing energy cooperation with India are thus a double-edged weapon. Further, given the frequent bomb blasts in Baluchistan that disrupt Pakistan's own gas supplies and the propensity of both Iran and Pakistan to link economic ties to political developments, is it prudent to rush into constructing an Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline?



Despite denials by New Delhi, an important factor underlying the position that India took on Iranian nuclear proliferation was its natural desire to see international sanctions that it has endured for nearly three decades on the supply of nuclear power reactors by members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) end as soon as possible. Following the agreement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed with President Bush during his visit to Washington in July, important nuclear suppliers like Russia, France, Britain and Canada have indicated their readiness to work together with the United States to end NSG sanctions on India. It would, therefore, not have been in our national interests to abstain on a EU3 sponsored resolution that sought compliance with the Statute of the IAEA and reported Iranian violations of IAEA safeguards obligations to the Security Council. It would not have been credible to claim that India is opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and then condone clandestine Iranian actions violating the Statute of the IAEA.



Mr Manmohan Singh has stated that India would support the EU3 initiative on securing Iranian compliance with the provisions of the NPT. Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz indicated that his country would take a similar position on the issue while visiting South Korea and Malaysia. New Delhi should assist in trying to bridge differences between the EU3 and Iran, but not budge on its support for reporting IAEA Statute violations to the Security Council and General Assembly. India should also make it clear at the IAEA that it is inconsistent for an international organisation to focus only on Iran for receiving P1 and P2 uranium enrichment centrifuges from Pakistan. (The P2 centrifuges are reportedly of Chinese origin.) Dr AQ Khan supplied not only centrifuge data to Libya but also the design of a nuclear weapon that Pakistan had received from China. The IAEA and the Security Council will have to carry out a comprehensive investigation on whether the 'Khan Network' provided Iran also with nuclear weapons designs.



India should propose a comprehensive investigation into the role of Dr AQ Khan and General Mirza Aslam Beg in nuclear transfers to Iran and a similar investigation into the role of General Jehangir Karamat in nuclear transfers to Pyongyang. The IAEA undermines its credibility when it adopts double standards and avoids investigation of those who are 'non-NATO allies' of the US, or are permanent members of the Security Council. But can we accuse the IAEA alone of double standards? We have yet to hear forthright condemnation by CPI(M) functionaries like Mr Prakash Karat, of nuclear and missile proliferation by China and Pakistan - proliferation that undermines and endangers India's national security.


Details of PAKI & CHINESE Proliferation
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Post by jrjrao »

"Because we are MuNNA, and because Uncle Sammy and we tightly hold each other's proverbials in our hands, we won't get punished no matter how much we proliferate", say the Pakis.

A lesson from Pakistan on proliferation

By FARHAN BOKHARI
It is impossible to say exactly what transactions took place between Pakistan and North Korea under Khan's supervision. Anonymous Western diplomats have been quoted in newspapers claiming that Pakistan helped North Korea to develop its nuclear-weapons program and in return received components for nuclear-capable missiles.

In spite of such allegations, the international community can do little to penalize Islamabad. Pakistan's close relationship with the U.S. in the so-called war on terror means that Washington is willing to ignore some of Islamabad's less desirable actions.

It's of little use to apply too much pressure to a nuclear power as such a move could lead to its becoming defiant and refusing to cooperate with international measures aimed at curbing nuclear-weapons proliferation.
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Post by SaiK »

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/oct/05uk1.htm
UK okay to paki civilian nukes... they have no problems with pakistan sophisticating with suitcase weapons... and they are ok to parcel the suitcase technology part of the deal.

UK feels the recent london bombings has nothing to do with pakistan, and would further declare to ensure future bombings are more devastating so that UK feels it is now engaged with a terrorist nation.

What can and who can stop any nation to feel good with pakistan. have fun!
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Post by Sunil »

I have problems with the US supplying nuclear reactors to the Pakistanis.

All I ask is that the proliferation risk be minimized.

As we know that Pakistanis like A Q Khan have sold nuclear technology to Libya and Iran. The are also reports that Pakistan was selling nuclear technology to KSA.

I find it difficult to accept that a nation with such a poor record of proliferation would be considered for US assistance without credible moves towards eliminating the proliferation risk.

I feel for the Pakistanis to regain credibility on the proliferation issues they must:

1) Punish A Q Khan for what he has done.

2) Penalize all military officers that were connected with this illegal venture.

3) Charge all former Army COAS' whose job it was to watch over this with criminal negligence and indict them in court.

4) Verifiably abandon all plutonium refining activities - shut down khusab.

5) Convert all enriched uranium by A Q Khan into reactor fuel for the American supplied reactors.

6) Sell any reactor grade plutonium it has to France, Russia or China for use in their fast breeders.

Only this will ensure that there is credible proliferation resistance in the Pakistanis stockpile.
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Post by jrjrao »

CIA likely to get access to AQ Khan
Pakpaper link
LAHORE: The CIA is likely to be allowed to interrogate the father of the country’s atomic bomb, Dr AQ Khan, according to informed diplomatic sources. The sources said Dr Khan would be enquired about the alleged transfer of atomic technology to Iran and his statement would be recorded. An investigation team of the CIA would visit Pakistan in the middle of November, they said. The sources also revealed that US Secretary of State Ms Rice had informed President Musharraf during their last meeting that he (Musharraf) had no other option. It is also learnt that Dr AQ Khan’s statement will be used as proof against Iran when the matter of Tehran’s nuclear programme is presented before the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Earlier, President Musharraf had demanded the US not to investigate Dr Khan because Iran is a neighbourly Islamic country having cordial relations with Pakistan. But the United States, brushing aside the demand, had insisted on access to Dr Khan.

The diplomatic sources said that Ms Rice had made it clear to President Musharraf that Iran’s nuclear programme was no longer a bilateral issue between Pakistan and Iran.
And that it had turned into an international crisis and if Iran succeeded in making nuclear weapons, it would put the whole world in an awkward situation.

A diplomat revealed that Pakistan had sought assurances from the US that Dr Khan’s statement would not be put to any other use, which was guaranteed. However, it could not be guaranteed that this statement would not be used against Pakistan in the future, the diplomat added. :)
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Post by arun »

October 14, 2005

Bush Cited 2 Allies Over Arms, Book Says

By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 - Two months before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush told Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he "wanted to go beyond Iraq" in dealing with the spread of illicit weapons and mentioned Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on a list of countries posing particular problems, according to notes taken by one of Mr. Blair's advisers cited in a new book.

Mr. Bush's comment, in a private telephone conversation on Jan. 30, 2003, could be significant because it appeared to add Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to a list that previously had included public mentions only of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, which the president had called an "axis of evil."

The comment is reported in an American edition of "Lawless World," by Philippe Sands, a professor at University College, London, and a practicing lawyer. An earlier edition of the book, published in Britain in February, included details from other prewar British government documents, but it did not include the detail from the Jan. 30 conversation. The British government has not questioned the authenticity of the documents described in the book.

The contents of a Jan. 30 document describing the conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair have been reviewed by The New York Times. It shows that the notes were taken by Matthew Rycroft, then the private secretary to Mr. Blair, and addressed to Simon McDonald, then the principal private secretary to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw. The contents show that the document was marked secret and personal and said it "must only be shown to those with a real need to know."

The White House declined to comment, saying that any telephone conversation between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair at that time would have been private and personal. A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington also declined to comment.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are both close allies of the United States, and the Bush administration has been careful to avoid public criticism of them.

Pakistan tested its first nuclear weapon in 1998, and the founder of its nuclear program, A. Q. Khan, has long been the subject of American concern over his role in providing nuclear technology to other countries. It has long been speculated that Saudi Arabia may also be seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, perhaps from Pakistan. But Saudi Arabia has denied having a nuclear weapons program. Neither country has been mentioned publicly by the Bush administration as possible targets of new efforts to counter weapons proliferation.

The notes taken by Mr. Rycroft do not provide any indication of what Mr. Bush meant by including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on the list of concern over so-called weapons of mass destruction, a review of the contents shows. The reference is confined to one sentence in a two-page document, which says that Mr. Bush "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan."
The document is revealing in other ways not described in the book. It records a conversation between the leaders a day before they met in Washington, and shows that they discussed whether to seek a second United Nations resolution imposing an ultimatum on Iraq before beginning any military action.

Mr. Bush was reported to have agreed with Mr. Blair that "it made sense to try for a second resolution, which he would love to have." But Mr. Bush was also said to be "worried about Saddam playing tricks" and the possibility that Hans Blix, the top United Nations weapons inspector, would report "that Saddam was beginning to cooperate."

"His biggest concern was looking weak," the British document says, describing Mr. Bush. It says that the two leaders had agreed that United Nations inspectors in Iraq should be given "weeks not months," to complete their work. The United States and Britain led the invasion of Iraq that began seven weeks later.
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NSG divided on Pakistan’s N-status

Post by dwaipayan »

NSG divided on Pakistan’s N-status

http://www.intelligenceonline.net/allin ... recno=3516

18 October 2005: The Nuclear Suppliers’ Group is divided on giving Pakistan special atomic status like India, with Britain willing to consider this after fifteen years of Pakistani good conduct as a non-proliferating responsible nuclear power, but the US, Russia, Germany and France insist that it deweaponise unconditionally.

Diplomats said that separately Britain, France and Germany communicated their positions to India about the Pakistani bid backed by China to gain special nuclear status within the NSG, as earlier, the US and Russia informed this country about their thinking, and Britain’s argument is that pushing Pakistan out into the cold without assurances would encourage it to proliferate again, as the levers would be lost to control it.

On the other hand, France and Germany are strictly opposed to giving Pakistan any grace period for good conduct, since it could return to proliferation after this elapses and after winning special status, and the US and Russia are not even willing to consider Pakistani requests for a security guarantee in case it gives up its nuclear weapons, as all the big powers in the NSG except Britain want.

But even Britain and all the other key NSG players are unsure of Pakistan’s political stability and fear for the safety of its nuclear arsenal, and diplomats said that hectic communications with India could be a way of preparing it to give no-war guarantees in case the Pakistanis agree to abandon their weapons’ programme.
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Post by arun »

Pervez Hoodbhoy says International Aid for the December 25, 1974 Northern Areas quake may have funded Pakistan’s Nuclear programme :
VIEW: The challenge of Balakot —Pervez Hoodbhoy

............... For me personally, there is a sense of deja vu. Nearly 31 years ago, on December 25, 1974, a powerful earthquake flattened towns along the Karakorum Highway and killed nearly 10,000 people. I travelled with a university team into the same mountains for similar relief work. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had made a passionate appeal for funds around the world, had taken a token helicopter trip to the destroyed town of Besham, and then made fantastic promises of relief and rehabilitation.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in relief funds received from abroad mysteriously disappeared. Some well-informed people believe that those funds were used to kick off Pakistan’s secret nuclear programme. …………
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Post by Gerard »

The myth of "suitcase nukes."
In August 2001, bin Laden was envisioning attacks bigger than what happened on September 11. Almost a month before the attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri met with Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed, two officials once part of Pakistan's nuclear program. Mr. Mahmood had supervised the plant that enriched uranium for Pakistan's first bomb and later managed efforts to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Both scientists were arrested on Oct. 23, 2001. They remain under house arrest in Pakistan. At their meeting with bin Laden, they discussed plans to mine uranium from plentiful deposits in Afghanistan and talked about the technology needed to turn the uranium into bomb fuel. It was these scientists who informed bin Laden that the uranium from Uzbekistan was too impure to be useful for bomb making.
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Post by arun »

JDAM fears and the Pakistani link :
Qaeda 'dirty bomb' risk grows - German spy chief
Wed Nov 9, 2005 12:56 PM GMT

BERLIN (Reuters) - Evidence is mounting that terrorist groups are trying to make chemical, biological weapons or a "dirty bomb", a German spy chief was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

"We observe experiments, training efforts, and production instructions being passed on via the Internet," August Hanning, head of the BND foreign intelligence agency, told ARD television.

In extracts from the interview, released by ARD ahead of broadcast on Wednesday evening, Hanning was quoted as ruling out, for now, the possibility of terrorists stealing a nuclear weapon or producing one by themselves.

But a dirty bomb attack was "a very concrete threat" because it was "no real problem" to produce such a weapon, in which radioactive material would be packed with conventional explosive and scattered over a wide area on detonation.

Hanning said al Qaeda had several times tried to acquire radioactive material and made contact with Pakistani nuclear scientists.

"From the questioning of al Qaeda members it has become more and more clear that al Qaeda has tried to recruit scientists," he said, speaking ahead of a BND conference on proliferation in Berlin on Thursday.

"And we were greatly disturbed to see that a Malaysian biologist was hired with the aim of assembling production facilities for anthrax in Afghanistan."

Asked for further comment, a BND spokesman said both the Pakistani and Malaysian cases dated from 2001 but described them as part of "a chain of evidence that the danger is constantly growing".

Gerard
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Post by Gerard »

Hmm.. Xerox Khan's technology is "crap" ?

ElBaradei: Give Iran 'One Last Chance' Before Sanctions
The IAEA believes Iran could agree to limit work at Isfahan to UF4 because trial production runs of UF6, which is made from UF4, have been "crap," a senior IAEA official said. "The quality is just no good. This will allow Iran to save face."
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Post by Raj Malhotra »

Gerard wrote:Hmm.. Xerox Khan's technology is "crap" ?

ElBaradei: Give Iran 'One Last Chance' Before Sanctions
The IAEA believes Iran could agree to limit work at Isfahan to UF4 because trial production runs of UF6, which is made from UF4, have been "crap," a senior IAEA official said. "The quality is just no good. This will allow Iran to save face."
So Paki technology does not work?
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Post by Roop »

So Paki technology does not work?
Well, it is well known Paki technology is "crap" (as the article says), but our worry is the Chinese technology that Packees have (or used to have) in their possession.
Tilak
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Post by Tilak »

Iran hands over A-bomb instructions-diplomat
By Francois Murphy
Fri Nov 18, 2005 2:09 PM GMT
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a confidential report on Friday it had found an Iranian document which one European diplomat described as a "cookbook" for a nuclear weapon.

"Also among the documents was one ... on the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium into hemispherical forms," said the report by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei to the IAEA board of governors, which was seen by Reuters.

A diplomat described it to Reuters as a "cookbook" for making the enriched uranium metal core of an atomic weapon.

The United States and European Union suspect Iran is developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy programme. Tehran denies wanting nuclear weapons, insisting its atomic ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity.

The Iranians told the IAEA they had received the document from individuals linked to the nuclear black market set up by disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. :idea:

Iran stated that the document had been provided on the initiative of nuclear black marketeers, not at its own request, the report said. :shock:

Although this document shows how to make a vital part of an atomic weapon, there are many other parts it would need in order to produce an entire weapon, the diplomat added.

"Iran's full transparency is indispensable and overdue," the report said, repeating the wording used in the previous report on Iran issued on September 2.

While Iran had been "more forthcoming" in providing access to documents and information in some areas, open questions on the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme remain, the confidential report said.

The report said Iran should provide information and documentation on obtaining dual-use equipment and allow visits to various sites, including sites linked to Lavisan that the United States says was used for sensitive nuclear work but which was bulldozed before IAEA inspectors could visit it.
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Post by Tilak »

Iran given 'nuclear weapon' data
Friday, 18 November 2005
Iran has passed on to United Nations inspectors documents on how to build a crucial part of a nuclear bomb, the UN's atomic agency says.

Tehran says it got the information from the nuclear smuggling network run by disgraced Pakistani scientist AQ Khan, according to an agency report.

The Iranians say they neither requested the data from AQ Khan nor used it.

The agency concludes Iran has improved co-operation with its inspectors, but has yet to provide full transparency.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said more openness was "indispensable and overdue".

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is for energy purposes only.

But many board IAEA members are concerned about Iran's decision to resume uranium conversion - a precursor to enrichment. Highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.

In a five-page internal report, the agency said the Iranians had obtained data on processing enriched uranium from AQ Khan's network in 1987.

A source familiar with the report told the BBC the information amounted to "design information which could be used for a critical part of a nuclear bomb".

The IAEA report called on Tehran to give more information on equipment that could have both civilian and military uses.

It also said Iran had to provide access "to relevant military-owned workshops and research and development locations".


'Common goal'

Talks between European countries and Iran broke down in August, when Iran resumed nuclear conversion for the first time after a nine-month hiatus.

In depth: Nuclear fuel cycle

In September the IAEA's board called on Iran to cease all nuclear fuel work, and threatened to refer Tehran to the UN Security Council, which can impose sanctions. The IAEA's board of governors is set to meet again next week.

The US and Europe want Iran to give up all activities that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Senior US envoy Nicholas Burns was expected to meet British, French and German negotiators in London on Friday ahead of next week's meeting.

The US state department spokesman Adam Ereli said Friday's talks would consider "how together we can all act to accomplish our common goal".

He said Iran's decision to resume uranium processing went "against what they themselves have committed themselves to and what the international community has asked of them".
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Post by RanjanRoy »

Iran shafts Pakistan: Spills the beans. :twisted:
Defensenews:
11/18/05 12:54

Iran Gives U.N. Documents on Making Atom Bomb Core
By MARK HEINRICH and FRANCOIS MURPHY, REUTERS, VIENNA

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a confidential report on Nov. 18 that Iran had given it a document which diplomats said included partial instructions for making the core of a nuclear bomb.

The U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the disclosure raised concerns about weaponization, but other diplomats and a U.S. nuclear expert were more cautious, saying more investigation was needed into the issue.

“Iran’s full transparency is indispensable and overdue,” said IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei in a confidential report to the agency’s board of governors.

The report, seen by Reuters, said that among other documents it had found one “on the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium into hemispherical forms.”

One European diplomat described it as a “cookbook” for the enriched uranium core of a nuclear weapon.

But a U.S. nuclear expert, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, said it was far from a step-by-step guide to producing a bomb core.

“Iran has gone from saying it got nothing on this subject to (saying it got) a little bit,” he said. “But the question remains: Did Iran get more than it admitted to?”

The Iranians told the IAEA the document had come to them unsolicited from people linked to the nuclear black market set up by disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Iran says it wants to use nuclear power only to generate electricity and has the legal right to do so.

While Iran had been “more forthcoming” in providing access to documents and information in some areas, questions on the peaceful nature of its nuclear plans remained, the report said.

The IAEA board meets on Nov. 24 to decide whether to send Iran to the Security Council for failing to allay suspicions it is hiding a nuclear arms program behind a civilian one.

“This (document) opens new concerns about weaponization that Iran has failed to address,” U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Gregory Schulte said in a statement.

Britain said the IAEA should investigate the questions raised in its latest report. “They only serve to reinforce existing concerns about Iran’s true intentions about its nuclear program,” a Foreign Office spokesman said.

The IAEA report asked Iran to provide information on dual-use equipment and allow visits to sites such as those at Lavizan. Washington says one site was used for sensitive nuclear work but was bulldozed before IAEA inspectors could visit it.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said earlier the IAEA should justify its request for access to Lavizan.

“We cannot accept this demand just because they wish it, especially since Lavizan-Shian is a military complex,” the semi-official ISNA students’ news agency quoted him as saying.

Uranium Processing Resumes

Larijani also confirmed Iran had resumed uranium conversion at its Isfahan plant. “We had informed the U.N. watchdog that Iran wanted to process a new batch of uranium and we have started it,” he told reporters Nov. 17. ... . . . .
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Post by Laks »

It seems the Iranians are running a full page ad in today's New York Times typeset in a very small font :twisted:. I wonder if we can get more info on Xerox's unsolicited help.
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Post by Tilak »

China, US sign agreement on preventing illegal nuke trade
Beijing, Nov 20 (PTI) China, which is often accused of shipping nuclear and sensitive technology to countries like Iran and Pakistan, has inked an agreement with the United States to prevent illegal trafficking of nuclear and other radioactive material.

Representatives from China's General Administration of Customs and General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and the US Department of Energy signed the MoU here yesterday.

The MoU aims at further promoting the cooperation in the fields of anti-terrorism and non-proliferation between the two nations, Chinese Foreign Ministry sources said.

In the past, US State Department has slapped sanctions on many Chinese companies for "transferring" sensitive technology and material to countries like Iran and Pakistan. However, Beijing terms the sanctions as "groundless," citing the country's adherence to its international commitments. PTI
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Post by Tim »

Unsolicited.

I guess I'm going to have to look that word up again. I thought it meant something slightly different.

:D

Tim
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Post by Rangudu »

Chinese promises are the most worthless of diplomatic junk bonds, perhaps matched only by Mushy's 400% "assurances" :evil:
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MoU is not agreement

Post by AJay »

There is b ig difference between an MoU and an Agreement. Just ask the Indian babus :)
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Post by arun »

A.Q. Khan’s nuclear escapades: CIA helped him get visa

by K. Subrahmanyam

THE latest report from Vienna talks of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) informing its Board of Governors that Iran had turned over to the IAEA fresh documents that give details, for the first time, about technology that Iran was offered in 1987 by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the proliferator from Pakistan. According to this report, included in the engineering drawings and other technology offered to the Iranians were diagrams about how to form uranium metal into “hemispherical spheres”, a description that would suggest the basic steps toward creating bomb cores. Such spheres are needed for the Hiroshima type of atomic bombs.

It is to be noted that this cooperation from Iran has come about after the September 24 IAEA resolution. In the previous 30 months of investigation and inspection by the IAEA, Iran did not produce similar evidence. The new documentation will reveal that Dr Khan’s proliferation started as far back as 1987.

The US and British authorities, including President George W Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair and former CIA chief George Tenet, claimed that Dr Khan’s activities came to their notice only around 1998 and they busted the Khan proliferation ring in 2003. There is, however, new evidence to indicate that Dr Khan had been protected by the CIA since 1975. This disclosure comes from an unimpeachable source, Dr Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch Prime Minister.

In an interview to VPRO Argos Radio on August 9, 2005, Dr Lubbers revealed that Dr Khan was arrested in 1975 for espionage and in 1988 for illegal entry into Holland. On both occasions he was allowed to go scot-free because of the CIA’s intervention.

In 1992, according to Dr Lubbers, Dr Khan wanted to visit Holland to see his ailing father-in-law (his wife is a Dutch). While he was for refusing visa to Dr Khan, the case for visa was sponsored by no less a person than the head of the Dutch secret service, BVD, Arthur Dokters Van Leeuwen. A BVD person received Dr Khan on his arrival at Schipol airport. The BVD was presumably acting under instructions from American intelligence agencies.

Dr Lubbers said: “If you were to study the archives, you would find that the American intelligence agencies — I am absolutely certain of it — kept a record of how closely they watched the man and what he was upto, etc. They thought as such they were doing a terrific job.”

When it was pointed out by the presenter of the programme that still Dr A Q Khan continued, Dr Lubbers replied, “Yes, but that is the shortcoming of the management. And yes, that’s when we saw it was the leader of the free world. And we do take quite seriously the fact that they did a lot of good things. But they were not able to subdue the monster of proliferation, to put it that way.”

Complimenting the Dutch secret service, on doing a good job, Dr Lubbers concluded, “The BVD reported it to its counterpart in Washington. The counterpart in Washington then follows a course that amounts to let him go and we will gain more information. And that is where things start to go wrong.”

He added as a final thought: “It also indicates the peculiar situation that important problems are handled by the intelligence agencies. There is something unhealthy about it.”

Contrary to what Mr Bush, Mr Blair and Mr Tenet said, Dr Khan was not only under close watch of the CIA during the period he was proliferating to Iran but was also helped by the CIA and the Dutch secret service to get entry visa to Holland in 1992. That would indicate that there has been considerable economising of truth in regard to the CIA’s relationship with Dr Khan by both US and British leaderships going back to 1975.

One can understand why Pakistan and China do not want Iranian proliferation to come up before the Security Council since their conduct will be scrutinised. Presumably, the Americans thought by pressing the IAEA for a vote on the resolution they would increase pressure on Iran and compel it to accept a compromise which will make Iran give up uranium enrichment. Now that there is a risk of Dr Khan’s story coming out with the likely disclosures of his connections with the CIA, the US enthusiasm for a resolution to refer the Iranian issue to the Security Council appears to have cooled somewhat. Latest reports indicate that the US is in favour of a compromise and allowing more time to Iran.

It is expected of some of our leftists to show interest in preventing a resolution for the referral of Iran to the Security Council from being adopted because of their ideological loyalty to China, the arch nuclear proliferator. In the process, they are also helping the CIA to bury its connections with Dr Khan and its responsibility for nuclear proliferation. No doubt, the CIA would be very grateful to our left for the services they are rendering to it. In the US establishment there are many pro-China and pro-Pakistan nuclear ayatollahs. Some of them looked the other way when they were told by Gen Aslam Beg that Pakistan would share its nuclear technology with Iran. The North Korea-Pakistan deal of exchange of nuclear centrifuge technology for missiles was hushed up by some of the nuclear ayatollahs during the Clinton Administration. Dr Khan was the central figure in that deal.

China, over the years, has developed significant influence over sections of the US establishment. It would be a legitimate question to ask why our left should help the CIA. In international politics, stranger things have happened like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact or the Nixon-Mao deal.

So, students of international politics should continue to keep this issue under close study. In this connection, it may be recalled that the Chinese Communist Party paper, Renmin Ribao, recently condemned the Indo-US civil nuclear energy cooperation agreement and supported the stand taken by the American ayatollahs, who are attempting to blackmail the Bush Administration that if such a deal goes through China would intensify its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan (as if it is not already doing it!)

What is in our national interest? Surely, bringing out and exposing Dr A Q Khan’s simultaneous links with the CIA and China and Pakistan’s role as a state proliferator. This is what our vote of September 24 indicated. India should continue to persist with its principled policy on this issue.
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Post by ramana »

All this is old hat circa 1987. KS is incorrect about the ref to Hiroshima device which was a gun type device. The hemispheres refer to an implosion device which is more sophisticated like the Nagasaki one. Allegations are that the Chinese 4th test was of similar device. I think Iran threw this as a sop to IAEA.

They still have one more design wihch they have to be candid about- the design of the device proofed at Chagai in 1998. I am going by their bravado which makes Ahmedinejad court disaster and gut instinct. AQK appears to have given that design in 2001 after 911 due to ummah considerations.
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Post by kgoan »

KS also seems to be saying that the US was as interested in making sure PakLand had nukes to protect them from an Indian reaction to Pak terrorism as China was.

Which makes his support for the nuclear agreement and the US strategic link more than a little interesting.
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Post by svinayak »

kgoan wrote:KS also seems to be saying that the US was as interested in making sure PakLand had nukes to protect them from an Indian reaction to Pak terrorism as China was.
.
After 1971 there has been long term plan between Uncle, TSP and Dragon to beef up Pakiland from further split. The revolts in 1975 in Baloch made them sure that Paki integrity is in question. TSP was encouraged for Military in state matters when they saw futility of nation building in the land of the pure.

Which makes his support for the nuclear agreement and the US strategic link more than a little interesting
This is chankian in practice. It needs a whole new thread to discuss.
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