Iran's nuclear capability probed
ANDREW KOCH JDW Washington Bureau Chief
Vienna
JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY - MARCH 05, 2003
Iran has made more progress than previously publicly disclosed in furthering its nuclear weapons capabilities, though its ultimate intentions remain unclear. According to US and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials, Iran is developing a full-scale uranium enrichment facility near Natanz, 160km north of Esfahan. It has completed a pilot-scale centrifuge cascade for such work at that location.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, who visited the site on 22 February, called the facility sophisticated and comprehensive while noting it will be placed under the agency's nuclear safeguards regime.
The new details have once again raised US concerns that Iran is progressing towards a nuclear weapons capability. US officials have repeatedly stated their concern that Iran is developing all the necessary technical capabilities to build nuclear weapons if a decision to do so is made.
The officials said they are concerned that Iran could use such facilities to gain access to fissile material - a key step to developing nuclear weapons. Iran, they said, could clandestinely divert fissile material from a location such as Natanz; use that technology to build a similar but secret facility elsewhere; or utilise the facility itself after withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at some future date.
"Because of its size, there is a good chance [Natanz] is intended for civilian commercial purposes although a covert nuclear programme could certainly be maintained there," a US defence official told Jane's Defence Weekly.
With its huge petroleum reserves, US officials question why Iran would spend the large sums of limited financial resources necessary to build facilities such as Natanz if developing a nuclear weapons option is not their ultimate intention. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami announced in early February that Iran intends to build all portions of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment, and had begun mining uranium ore at a site 200km from the city of Yazd.
Iran has pledged to co-operate with the IAEA to resolve any of the agency's concerns regarding its nuclear facilities. It is also considering the acceptance of enhanced safeguards, under what is called the additional protocol, for those facilities.
"One of Mr ElBaradei's demands was that Iran join the additional protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This demand was accepted by the Iranian government," said Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation. ElBaradei said he hoped Iran's acceptance of enhanced safeguards would "happen in the near future".
Iran also pledged to inform the IAEA of any plans to build further nuclear facilities once a decision to do so is made.
Tehran did not inform the IAEA until after construction at Natanz was well under way. Such an omission is not a violation of its IAEA safeguards obligations if nuclear material has not been introduced into the facility - as appears to be the case. The IAEA found out about the Natanz site in mid-2002, ElBaradei said.
One unresolved question regarding the Natanz facility is how Tehran acquired the centrifuge technology. The presence of a completed pilot-plant suggests that the technology has been imported or that related research and development work was conducted at other locations yet to be declared to the IAEA. Iran would only have to declare such a facility six months prior to the introduction of nuclear material.
A US defence official said that "the Russians are involved in all aspects of [Iran's] nuclear programme," and Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told Congress in February that Russia continues to provide Tehran with "sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle assistance". However, Tenet added, Russia has cut back on that assistance.
Another source of technology for the uranium enrichment programme, the defence official said, is Pakistan, which has provided Iran with equipment and materials.
Tenet also alluded to possible Chinese help, saying: "Chinese firms may be backing away from Beijing's 1997 bilateral commitment to forego any new nuclear co-operation with Iran."
Iran is building a uranium hexafluouride conversion plant at Esfahan that would provide the feedstock for the centrifuge enrichment plant and any possible Chinese assistance to that facility could be what Tenet is referring to.
Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
From JDW, no link.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi arabia will want it too.
Part of America's motivation for controlling Pak's nuclear program is to prevent Saudi Arabia from having access to the bomb. Having financed pakistan's nuclear program, they may land up with nothing.
Their ambassador was irate about that a while ago accusing US of trying to control Pak's nuclear program.
Part of America's motivation for controlling Pak's nuclear program is to prevent Saudi Arabia from having access to the bomb. Having financed pakistan's nuclear program, they may land up with nothing.
Their ambassador was irate about that a while ago accusing US of trying to control Pak's nuclear program.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Iran's Nuclear Program Speeds Ahead
Since the mid-1980s, Iran has made no secret of its quest for uranium enrichment. Many specialists have said Iran's final hurdle in building a bomb would be obtaining fissile material such as enriched uranium.
It is not known precisely where Iran obtained the blueprints and the many specialized materials used to make centrifuges. Although some U.S. officials suspect Pakistan provided designs for the centrifuges in the early 1990s, the machines on display at Natanz had been significantly modified by Iranian engineers and could not be easily traced to a single country or supplier, according to U.S. and independent nuclear experts.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Korea experts see true crisis
Milhollin and others said that the United States has been partly to blame. A critical blunder, they say, was failing to do more to prevent Pakistan from developing its own nuclear weapons, which it tested in response to India's nuclear tests in 1998.
Pakistan is known subsequently to have sold some nuclear technology to North Korea, while Pyongyang has sold missiles to Pakistan.
Experts said perhaps the most important thing North Korea learned from the exchange was how much more secure Pakistan apparently felt after having assembled its own nuclear arsenal.
At the same time, U.S. condemnation was mild at best and resulted in no permanent damage to Pakistan's relations with Washington.
"It was extremely seductive, in my opinion, for the North Koreans to hear this from the Pakistanis," said Gregg.
Wortzel said North Korea felt "greatly encouraged by the fact that the U.S. has accepted a nuclear-armed Pakistan."
"I just don't see that the North Koreans are going to give up their nuclear weapons," said Wortzel. "We just have to deal with that."
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
U.S. officials fear nuclear attack by al-Qaida
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/0303/14nuclear.html
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/0303/14nuclear.html
Some in government suspect al-Qaida has a secret nuclear-bomb lab in Sudan, Pakistan or Yemen. Other officials doubt it...sure thing
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Cross posted
The KRL sanctions were apparently related to the Nukes for Nodongs deal.
U.S. Imposes Sanctions After Missile Sale
The KRL sanctions were apparently related to the Nukes for Nodongs deal.
U.S. Imposes Sanctions After Missile Sale
In targeting the AQ Khan Nuclear Research Institute along with the North Korean firm that reportedly delivered the Nodong missiles, the administration is also delivering a warning to Pakistan, whose help is deemed essential to the battle against the al Qaeda terror network.
One official described a significant debate within the administration about the wisdom of sanctioning the Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf while the two countries conduct joint operations in search of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.
The administration in the end chose not to sanction the Pakistani government. Officials said Musharraf was credited for cooperating in the counterterrorism fight, as well as for his repeated insistence in recent months that Pakistan has halted all military cooperation with North Korea.The missiles were delivered last summer.
The Khan institute is home to Pakistan's nuclear program, but separate from the government. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell notified Musharraf last week of the sanctions, which prohibit Khan from doing business with the U.S. government or American companies for two years.
A spokesman for Pakistan's embassy in Washington yesterday denied that anyone in Pakistan had acquired Nodongs, which have a range of about 800 miles. He called the sanctions "misplaced and discriminatory."
"We beg to differ," the spokesman said. "Whatever missile technology we have is indigenous."
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
From Financial Times.
US imposes sanctions on Pakistan over missiles
US imposes sanctions on Pakistan over missiles
Pakistan has long denied providing any nuclear assistance to North Korea. Colin Powell, US secretary of state, said last November that he had been personally assured by General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, that there were no further contacts between Pakistan and the North Korean regime.
The limited sanctions indicate that the US is prepared to waive any tougher measures as long as Pakistan makes good on that promise.
But there is considerable scepticism in the Bush administration and in Congress that those ties have in fact been severed.
"The administration's strategy is essentially to accept the Pakistani cover story that this was a few private individuals who have nothing to do with the government, and that this is a thing of the past," said a Senate Democrat. "I don't think anyone really believes that, but do we want to go to war with Pakistan now?"
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
... said a Senate Democrat. "I don't think anyone really believes that, but do we want to go to war with Pakistan now?"
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Cross posted.
NKorea exported Scud missiles to Pakistan in March: Japanese report
NKorea exported Scud missiles to Pakistan in March: Japanese report
North Korea exported some 10 Scud missiles to Pakistan last month possibly in return for Islamabad's nuclear technology, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday, quoting an unnamed US security official.
The Scud B missiles with the range of 300 kilometres (185 miles) were loaded on a Pakistan-flagged cargo ship in North Korea's southwestern port of Nampo in mid-March, the Sankei Shimbun said.
The vessel was refuelled at a Chinese port and entered Pakistani territory in late March, it said, quoting the US official and other anonymous sources.
The United States detected the missile export with satellite information from the National Reconnaissance Office and as a result of Central Intelligence Agency espionage, it said.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Pak nukes come under US scanner
Now only if we could confirm this "independently".
About time, about time.Jane’s report reinforces India’s firm belief that US has put contingency plan in place
Now only if we could confirm this "independently".
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Cross posting...
A bomb for the Ummah
By David Albright & Holly Higgins
Some of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists believe that the bomb should be shared with all of the Muslim community, even—or especially—with Al Qaeda.
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/ma03/ma03albright.html
A bomb for the Ummah
By David Albright & Holly Higgins
Some of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists believe that the bomb should be shared with all of the Muslim community, even—or especially—with Al Qaeda.
SIDEBAR
David Albright obtained a copy of what is apparently a sales brochure from the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories.
In June 2000, two Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood and Chaudiri Abdul Majeed, founded Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, “Reconstruction of the Muslim Ummah,” or “UTN,” an organization whose purported purpose was to conduct relief and development work in Afghanistan.
A few weeks after September 11, however, Pakistani authorities detained Mahmood, Majeed, and other UTN board members amid charges that their activities in Afghanistan had involved helping Al Qaeda in its quest to acquire nuclear and biological weapons as well. The U.S. government, which pressed for Mahmood’s and Majeed’s arrest, later placed them and their organization on its list of individuals and organizations supporting terrorism.
Although Mahmood and Majeed had met several times with Al Qaeda, Pakistani officials insisted that they lacked the specific scientific know-how to help Al Qaeda build nuclear weapons. “For that kind of operation you need dozens and dozens of people and millions of dollars,” a senior member of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) told the October 28, 2001 Mercury News. “That sort of technology transfer takes 50–60 years. The chance that [the two scientists] gave the Taliban nuclear arms is zero—less than zero.”
However, the November 1, 2001 New York Times quoted other Pakistani officials who said that such denials should not be taken at face value. According to the Times, one Pakistani official recalled the instructions he received in the mid-1990s about contacts with American officials. He was told to deny that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons, even though the country had fully assembled nuclear bombs at the time. “It’s just one of those things you can’t be absolutely straightforward about,” he told Times reporter John Burns.
The Pakistani government held Mahmood and Majeed for several months, demonstrating its determination to uncover the extent of their cooperation with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Their detention also sent a signal to Pakistan’s nuclear establishment that the government intended to protect sensitive information and stop illicit exports that might advance other nuclear weapon programs.
A colorful character
Mahmood is reported to have resigned from Pakistan’s nuclear agency in the spring of 1999 to protest his government’s willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Pakistan expressed soon after it conducted a series of underground nuclear tests in May 1998. Mahmood spoke and wrote widely against joining the treaty, arguing that it would impose huge political and military costs, but provide few rewards. In his view, “If we keep developing nuclear technology on the path of self-reliance, and also extend cooperation to other countries in this field, shall we not be the gainers ultimately?”1
Mahmood was pressured to resign, in part because the U.S. government wanted him removed after learning of his sympathies for militant Islamic groups. Mahmood publicly supported the Taliban, and in speeches at Pakistani universities he suggested that Taliban rule should serve as a model for Pakistan.2 Even after September 11, he continued to support the regime.
Senior Pakistani officials are reported to have been concerned about Mahmood’s promotion of the idea of producing weapon-grade plutonium and uranium to help equip other Islamic nations. He described Pakistan’s nuclear capability as “the property of a whole Ummah [Muslim community].”3
An illustrious career. Mahmood returned home after studying nuclear engineering in Britain in the 1960s. He had a long career in Pakistan’s nuclear program and held a variety of senior positions. He had been a director of the nation’s nuclear program and served in key positions until his retirement.
A report in the Times of India said that Mahmood came to prominence in the 1970s after developing a technique to detect heavy water leaks in steam pipes at the Canadian-supplied Knapp nuclear power reactor near Karachi, using a device patented in his name in Canada and known worldwide under his initials as the “SBM Probe.”4 He also published articles on electric motors used in radiation environments, quality assurance, technology transfer, and project management.
His son told the November 8, 2001 Guardian that his father had wept after India conducted its first underground nuclear test in 1974, and that he vowed then to make Pakistan an atomic power. A few months after the Indian test, President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto called a meeting of his best nuclear scientists to discuss Pakistan’s reaction. Although Mahmood was a junior scientist at the time, he argued strenuously in favor of building nuclear weapons and recommended buying necessary items through a secret program.
Mahmood worked on Pakistan’s secret gas centrifuge program, which ultimately produced the highly enriched uranium used in its nuclear weapons, and he is credited with playing a pioneering role in establishing Pakistan’s uranium enrichment project. Abdul Qadeer (A. Q.) Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s uranium enrichment program, took over the project some time later.
Mahmood’s most prestigious assignment was designing the Khushab reactor, an unsafeguarded reactor project that depended extensively on illicit procurement from abroad. After the reactor went critical in April 1998, Mahmood identified himself as its chief designer and director and said that with this reactor (which can produce enough plutonium for two to three nuclear weapons per year) Pakistan had “acquired the capability to produce . . . boosted thermonuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs.”
The occult. Mahmood has had a bizarre fascination with the occult and has written a series of controversial, pseudoscientific papers. In 1987, he published the 232-page treatise Doomsday and Life After Death—The Ultimate Fate of the Universe as Seen Through the Holy Quran. This collection, based on Islamic teachings, included a chapter in which he explained how the world will end and theorized that his “scientific mind can work backward and analyze the actual mechanism . . . of the great upheaval before the Earth’s Doomsday.”
In Cosmology and Human Destiny, published in 1998, Mahmood argued that sunspots have influenced major human events, including the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and World War II. He concluded that governments across the world “are already being subjected to great emotional aggression under the catalytic effect of the abnormally high sunspot activity under which they are most likely to adapt aggression as the natural solution for their problems.”
A friend, Farhatullah Babar, a media adviser to the Pakistan Peoples’ Party, said that Mahmood predicted in Cosmology and Human Destiny that “the year 2002 was likely to be a year of maximum sunspot activity. It means upheaval, particularly on the Indian subcontinent, with the possibility of nuclear exchanges.”5 One passage of the book reportedly states: “At the international level, terrorism will rule; and in this scenario use of mass destruction weapons cannot be ruled out. Millions, by 2002, may die through mass destruction weapons, hunger, disease, street violence, terrorist attacks, and suicide.”
A follower of Israr Ahmad. Mahmood is a devout follower of Israr Ahmad, a radical pro-Taliban Islamic cleric. Ahmad advocates the creation of a “true Islamic state” and rejects Western constitutional and democratic models. In October 2001, Ahmad predicted that Afghanistan would prove a graveyard for the United States.
The others
Less is known about Majeed, who retired in 2000 after a long and successful career in the Nuclear Materials Division of the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (Pinstech) at Rawalpindi. In the 1960s, Majeed trained at a plutonium facility in Belgium, and he spent some time in the 1970s or early 1980s at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. CNN and NBC reported that he was associated with New Labs at Rawalpindi, where plutonium was separated for nuclear weapons. He is an expert in nuclear fuels, according to the U.S. government, and published extensively in the 1980s and 1990s on nuclear detectors and the use of X-ray diffraction, fluorescence, and crystallography.
According to the November 1, 2001 New York Times, all seven members of UTN’s board of directors were detained, among them Mirza Yusef Baig, an industrialist who owns the largest foundry in Pakistan. Baig had extensive ties with the Taliban regime, and had several contracts to build schools, hospitals, government buildings, and a flour mill in Afghanistan.
Others may also have been detained. USA Today reported on November 15, 2001, that at least 10 Pakistani nuclear scientists had been contacted by representatives of the Taliban government and Al Qaeda during the previous two years. U.S. officials believe several scientists told Al Qaeda they would help with a nuclear project, provided they got approval from the Pakistani government. It is not known whether that approval was granted.
In December 2001, the media reported that two other Pakistani nuclear scientists, Suleiman Asad and Mohammed Ali Mukhtar, were wanted for questioning about their possible links to Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials suspected that the two had also been involved with UTN. Pakistani officials said they were unavailable—that they had been sent soon after September 11 to an undisclosed research project in Myanmar, a country run by a military dictator with strained relations with the United States and most of the rest of the world.6 Pakistani officials said they did not want to interrupt the scientists’ work by having them return to Pakistan for questioning.
Concern about other Pakistani nuclear scientists continued into the summer of 2002. The Wall Street Journal reported on June 14 that U.S. officials were worried about two others. Officials said that these other two unnamed scientists were veterans of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons complex and associates of Mahmood and Majeed, and that one was already suspected of trying to sell weapon designs to unsavory customers.
Although the United States did not know whether these two scientists had ever traveled to Afghanistan, U.S. analysts were concerned that they might somehow have passed information on building nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda.
What was found in Kabul
Suspicion about Mahmood and others at UTN increased in November 2001. After the fall of the Taliban, coalition forces and the media began to search UTN facilities in Kabul. Some of the records found there revealed that the charity did indeed help Afghanistan with educational material, road building, and flour mills. But other records demonstrated that UTN was very interested in weapons of mass destruction.
The first revelations followed visits to UTN headquarters (which also served as Mahmood’s residence while he was in Kabul) and to subsidiary offices. Documents and drawings found at a UTN house suggest that someone had a particular interest in biological weapons, and was even designing a crude system for delivering anthrax by balloon.
Among the documents found in Kabul was an unclassified 1997 U.S. draft environmental assessment titled “Renovation of Facilities and Increased Anthrax Vaccine Production and Testing at the Michigan Biologic Products Institute.” A reader had printed several stars in the top left corner of the cover page, probably implying that he thought the report was significant. The report contains sections on the disease, its threat, the vaccine, production issues, and immunization.
Hundreds of copies of another document, “The Biologic Warfare: An Imminent Danger,” were found in the same house. This four-page diatribe accused the United States of planning to conduct biological warfare against the international Muslim community, using anthrax. The document cites as evidence the vaccination of U.S. troops and the expansion of U.S. vaccine production, purportedly in advance of attacking the Ummah.
Other anthrax-related documents included a copy of the home page of a Web site that contained information about the use of anthrax as a weapon.
Mahmood concluded in the fall of 2001 that Taliban soldiers fighting against the Northern Alliance had been exposed to chemical and biological weapons supplied by the United States, basing his claim on statements made by doctors at a Kandahar hospital.7 According to Mahmood, U.S. and British experts were training the Northern Alliance in the use of chemical and biological weapons. He denied that Afghanistan had an anthrax factory, charging that “military sources” had fabricated the story so that any anthrax attack in Afghanistan could be blamed on emissions from the factory. He called for non-governmental organizations to “come and help the Afghan nation against such an attack.”
Also found were a series of illustrations running the length of one room in UTN’s headquarters in Kabul that showed how high-altitude balloons could be used to spread anthrax spores or cyanide.8 There were boxes of gas masks and many containers of chemicals. A second-floor workshop, where many of the documents were located, contained a disassembled rocket with solid propellant and a cylinder labeled “helium.”
Links to terrorist groups. Ingrid Arnesen, a senior CNN producer who visited many UTN and Al Qaeda houses in Afghanistan, found documents linking UTN to Jaish e Muhammad, the Army of the Prophet Mohammad, a Pakistani militant group that had been outlawed in the spring of 2002. In the main UTN office she found a decal celebrating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
CNN personnel searched the offices of the Barakat Islami Investment General Trading and Contracting Co. Ltd. (BTC), located just off the dreary lobby of Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel. This office, which had been locked and abandoned before the fall of the Taliban, contained a number of documents describing UTN activities. Intelligence sources told CNN that the office was a branch of the Barakat network, which, according to the U.S. government, laundered money for Al Qaeda.
CNN found several drafts of a memorandum of understanding between UTN and Barakat, establishing a close working relationship to promote relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction of Afghanistan. The agreement was signed in Kabul on May 15, 2001, by Mahmood and Ghali Atia Alshamri, BTC’s president. They agreed to establish joint projects and share office space both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. They also agreed to share financial, technical, and human resources in all disciplines—commerce and industry, agriculture, banking and finance, health education, social welfare, communications, energy, minerals and mining, and research and development. According to these documents, BTC was working with Afghanistan’s minister of water and power, and UTN expected cooperation with BTC to accelerate the completion of its goals.
UTN’s public face
UTN’s stated mission was to focus on development, educational reform, and ways to feed the impoverished Afghan population. UTN officials also said they were guiding the Taliban in science-related matters.
According to Mahmood, he and his colleagues developed a large-scale investment plan aimed at establishing industrial networks.9 He said the Taliban had already agreed to many of their plans, including raising $100 million to build a dam and an oil refinery. They envisioned huge projects to develop Afghanistan’s energy, communication, and transportation infrastructure and to process Afghanistan’s abundant natural resources for use in Pakistan. To further their aims, they were creating a bank. UTN’s plan also called for developing final products in Pakistan, which would have been to Pakistan’s economic benefit. One day before his arrest, Mahmood bragged to the weekly Nida-i-Millat that if the United States had not attacked, Afghanistan would have developed into a strong industrial country during the next 10 years.
UTN was one of the few NGOs that had the approval of Mullah Omar, the head of Taliban Afghanistan. When UTN officials traveled to Afghanistan, their visas were sponsored by the Taliban’s ministry for mines and industry, whose head had a long association with bin Laden.
Nuclear dealings
According to Eurasianet.org, during his initial interrogations by U.S. and Pakistani officials, Mahmood denied having discussed nuclear matters with bin Laden or the Taliban. He “made his interrogators believe that that there was nothing wrong in his cooperation with Osama’s men and Taliban officials.” But after he and Majeed were told that the documents had been found in Kabul, they modified their statements.
According to the December 12, 2001 Washington Post, Mahmood and Majeed admitted that they had had long discussions with Al Qaeda officials in August 2001 about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Pakistani intelligence officials told the Post that they believe the scientists had used UTN as a cover for secret talks.
The Associated Press, quoting Mahmood’s son, reported in late November 2002 that bin Laden approached Mahmood several months before September 11, 2001, about making nuclear weapons. The son said his father had met bin Laden several times while visiting Afghanistan.
On December 20, 2001, based in part on the growing evidence of UTN’s assistance to Al Qaeda’s nuclear weapons effort, the Bush administration announced that it was adding the organization to the list of entities supporting terrorism. The president ordered the organization’s assets be frozen under Executive Order 13224, and also froze the assets of three key directors—Mahmood, Majeed, and Sheikh Mohammed Tufail, a board member who owns one of Pakistan’s leading engineering companies.
A “Fact Sheet” distributed by the White House at the time of the announcement alleged that:
• The nuclear scientists had close ties to bin Laden and the Taliban;
• During repeated visits to Afghanistan, they met with bin Laden, Al Qaeda leaders, and Mullah Omar, and discussed the development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons;
• In one meeting, a bin Laden associate indicated he had nuclear material and wanted to know how to use it to make a weapon. Mahmood provided information about the infrastructure needed for a nuclear weapon program and the effects of nuclear weapons;
• After the fall of the Taliban regime, searches of UTN locations in Kabul yielded documents outlining basic physics related to nuclear weapons (as well as a plan to kidnap a U.S. attaché); and
• UTN had links to the WAFA Humanitarian Organization and Al Rashid Trust, two other NGOs with ties to Al Qaeda that had been designated as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224.
Media reports shed further light on the meetings between UTN and Al Qaeda. According to the December 12, 2001 Washington Post, Pakistani officials said the scientists admitted meeting with bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and two others over two to three days in August 2001 at a compound in Kabul. The scientists described bin Laden as intensely interested in nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
Bin Laden indicated to them that he had obtained, or had access to, some type of radiological material that he said had been acquired by the radical Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Mahmood and Majeed reportedly told bin Laden that it would not be possible to manufacture a nuclear weapon from that material. They claimed they provided no material or specific plans to bin Laden, but rather engaged in wide-ranging “academic” discussions.
Another Pakistani official told the Post, however, that the scientists had spoken extensively about weapons of mass destruction with bin Laden. This official described the scientists as “very motivated” and “extremist in their views,” but added that they were “discussing things that didn’t materialize, but fall under the breaking secrets act.” A December 16, 2001 Post report indicated that Pakistani officials familiar with the interrogations said the scientists had provided detailed responses to bin Laden’s technical questions about the manufacture of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
Al Qaeda reportedly wanted the Pakistani scientists’ help in making radiological dispersal devices. The March 3, 2002 Sunday Times (of London) reported that Farhatullah Babar, who has known Mahmood for many years, said U.S. interrogators were unable to prove that work on a dispersal device had progressed beyond an agreement in principle. Babar added that he thought Mahmood would have been willing to make such a device, but that the September attacks had ended the plan.
British officials, quoted in the December 13, 2001 Guardian, said they believed that other Pakistani nuclear experts had offered their expertise. These officials said that former Pakistani technicians from the weapons program also visited Al Qaeda officials to advise them on how to build nuclear weapons.
In late January 2002, Pakistani officials said they had decided not to press criminal charges against Mahmood or Majeed, despite concluding that the scientists had violated their secrecy oath during trips to Afghanistan. Pakistan’s government was reportedly concerned that a trial would cause further international embarrassment and risk disclosure of nuclear secrets.
The scientists were released from detention but agreed to remain under government control (essentially under house arrest), submit to travel restrictions, and limit their communications.10
Pakistani officials claimed that because the scientists were not involved in the actual production of nuclear weapons, they were not capable of providing sensitive or important information to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Taking stock
On March 3, 2002, the Washington Post revealed that Mahmood had failed a half dozen lie detector tests. His reaction has been to profess poor health and portray himself as a misunderstood victim.
In an interview with the Post, published on the same day, Mahmood said he underwent lie detector tests several times, but: “I could never stay before the machine beyond a few minutes because of my age and health, as it was very strenuous exercise that made my blood pressure go erratic and rendered my heart unstable.” He added that during one test, he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.
In the August 2001 meetings, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have provided Al Qaeda a road map to building nuclear weapons. This information is typically very helpful in understanding the steps that must be accomplished in making a nuclear weapon, identifying the necessary equipment and technology, and locating suppliers of key equipment. In addition, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have recruited other scientists with more direct knowledge of making nuclear weapons.
Evidence is also strong that these scientists provided significant assistance to Al Qaeda’s efforts to make radiation dispersal devices. However, the exact level of assistance remains uncertain.
It is unknown if they provided enough information to allow Al Qaeda to design a nuclear weapon. They do not appear to have fully cooperated with the Pakistani authorities, and establishing evidence of the transfer of a design would be difficult in the best of circumstances.
Transfer of sensitive nuclear weapons information could have happened in many ways. The scientists could have provided direct assistance to Al Qaeda’s nuclear weapons program, or they may have obtained secret documents during the course of their careers, which they passed to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Or they could have served as a funnel for assistance from other nuclear weapons experts.
The transfer of sensitive information by UTN officials or their colleagues could have taken place in Pakistan or in Afghanistan. UTN could have arranged the transfer of nuclear, or nuclear-related, hardware as well, but there is no evidence of such transfers.
The evidence to date supports the conclusion that UTN’s founders and their colleagues had not provided Al Qaeda with the necessary resources to make nuclear weapons by October 2001, even if Al Qaeda had somehow acquired enough separated plutonium or weapon-grade uranium to make a nuclear explosive. Al Qaeda’s nuclear program appears to have been relatively primitive, in spite of the group’s long-standing interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
Given the immense effort required, it is highly unlikely that UTN could have enabled Al Qaeda or the Taliban to build facilities to make plutonium or highly enriched uranium; the plutonium or uranium for a bomb would have had to come from a foreign source. But if the attacks on September 11 had not occurred, UTN officials would probably have provided extensive and ongoing assistance to Al Qaeda—a conclusion supported by the records found in UTN’s office in Kabul.
The Pakistani scientists who were involved in Afghanistan had long experience in supervising large, complicated projects. And they had multiple contacts within the Pakistani nuclear community, from which they could tap a reservoir of nuclear scientists and expertise. As a result, they were well positioned to make significant contributions to an Al Qaeda nuclear weapons program.
And Al Qaeda was well positioned to make use of their contributions. It was closely integrated into the Taliban regime, perhaps dominating it in military matters. An Al Qaeda nuclear weapons program could have had many of the characteristics of a national program, which would have made it easier to conduct the research and development necessary to build a crude nuclear explosive.
In addition, a quasi-national program would have been more likely to be successful in obtaining sensitive items than a terrorist group operating in a hostile country. UTN’s civilian projects could have served as a front for illicit procurement. If the Taliban government identified the end user of equipment as civilian, many sensitive items could have been easily imported.
Then, too, UTN officials would have had a unique advantage: Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program involved extensive illicit foreign procurement, and Mahmood himself had headed a large reactor project that imported quantities of sensitive technology, materials, components, and manufacturing equipment. He and his colleagues would have had extensive information about illicit procurement.
Several of UTN’s projects were designed to rebuild Afghanistan’s manufacturing, scientific, and engineering capabilities in universities and industries. Projects focused on reconstruction would have served as a convenient cover for importing sensitive items. And because many UTN projects were believed to be medical or humanitarian in nature, imports to these projects would probably have been exempt from the U.N. embargo on Afghanistan.
A surprising piece of information was UTN’s interest in uranium mining. It has been known for a long time that Afghanistan has uranium resources. But that Pakistani nuclear scientists and BTC were planning to extract uranium increases suspicions about their intentions. A nuclear weapon program would need uranium for components, or as a surrogate material for testing nuclear weapon designs or learning to make highly enriched uranium metal. Such a capability would also make any weapons program more indigenous.
Fortunately, the fall of the Taliban regime ended the threat that a quasi-national nuclear weapons program could have emerged in Afghanistan. But reconstructing what Al Qaeda learned or accomplished in its quest for nuclear weapons or radiation dispersal devices is difficult and time-consuming. Al Qaeda may know more about such weapons or may have made more progress in building them than Mahmood and Majeed have admitted. And because Al Qaeda is still believed to be actively seeking nuclear weapons, whatever the scientists provided may return to haunt us.
1. Sultan Mahmood and Muhammad Nasim, “CTBT: A Technical Assessment” (www.Pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2000/Jan/07/02.htm), Jan. 7, 2000.
2. Chidanand Rahghatta, “U.S. Spooked by ‘Spirited’ Pak Nuclear Scientist,” Times of India, Nov. 2, 2002.
3. Asmir Latif, “Two Pakistani Atomic Scientists Arrested,” Oct. 24, 2001 (www.islam online.net/English/News/2001-10/25/article3 .shtml).
4. Rahghatta, “U.S. Spooked by ‘Spirited’ Pak Nuclear Scientist.”
5. Quoted in “Bin Laden Almost Had Uranium Bomb,” Sunday Times (London), March 3, 2002.
6. David Sanger, Douglas Frantz, and James Risen, “Nuclear Experts in Pakistan May Have Links to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, Dec. 9, 2001.
7. “Pakistani Scientist Says No Anthrax Plant in Afghanistan, Discusses Prevention: U.S. Provides Chemical Weapons to Northern Alliance–Dr. Sultan,” Islamabad Khabrain, October 6, 2001, in Urdu (available in English from Foreign Broadcast Information Service, document number FBIS-NES-2001-1006).
8. For more detailed information about these drawings, see Chris Stephen, “Kabul House of Anthrax Secrets,” Evening Standard, Nov. 22, 2001; Douglas Frantz and David Rohde, “2 Pakistanis Linked to Papers on Anthrax Weapons,” New York Times, Nov. 28, 2001; and David Rohde, “Germ Weapon Plans Found at a Scientist’s House in Kabul,” New York Times, Dec. 1, 2001.
9. “Pro-Taliban Nuclear Scientist Planned Large-Scale Investment in Afghanistan,” Nawa-i-Waqt, October 31, 2001, in Urdu (in English, FBIS-NES-2001-1031).
10. Peter Baker and Kamran Khan, “Pakistan to Forgo Charges Against 2 Nuclear Scientists,” Washington Post, Jan. 30, 2002.
David Albright is the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C. Holly Higgins is a former research analyst at ISIS.
© 2003 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
A bomb for the Ummah
By David Albright & Holly Higgins
Some of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists believe that the bomb should be shared with all of the Muslim community, even—or especially—with Al Qaeda.
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/ma03/ma03albright.html
A bomb for the Ummah
By David Albright & Holly Higgins
Some of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists believe that the bomb should be shared with all of the Muslim community, even—or especially—with Al Qaeda.
SIDEBAR
David Albright obtained a copy of what is apparently a sales brochure from the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories.
In June 2000, two Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood and Chaudiri Abdul Majeed, founded Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, “Reconstruction of the Muslim Ummah,” or “UTN,” an organization whose purported purpose was to conduct relief and development work in Afghanistan.
A few weeks after September 11, however, Pakistani authorities detained Mahmood, Majeed, and other UTN board members amid charges that their activities in Afghanistan had involved helping Al Qaeda in its quest to acquire nuclear and biological weapons as well. The U.S. government, which pressed for Mahmood’s and Majeed’s arrest, later placed them and their organization on its list of individuals and organizations supporting terrorism.
Although Mahmood and Majeed had met several times with Al Qaeda, Pakistani officials insisted that they lacked the specific scientific know-how to help Al Qaeda build nuclear weapons. “For that kind of operation you need dozens and dozens of people and millions of dollars,” a senior member of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) told the October 28, 2001 Mercury News. “That sort of technology transfer takes 50–60 years. The chance that [the two scientists] gave the Taliban nuclear arms is zero—less than zero.”
However, the November 1, 2001 New York Times quoted other Pakistani officials who said that such denials should not be taken at face value. According to the Times, one Pakistani official recalled the instructions he received in the mid-1990s about contacts with American officials. He was told to deny that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons, even though the country had fully assembled nuclear bombs at the time. “It’s just one of those things you can’t be absolutely straightforward about,” he told Times reporter John Burns.
The Pakistani government held Mahmood and Majeed for several months, demonstrating its determination to uncover the extent of their cooperation with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Their detention also sent a signal to Pakistan’s nuclear establishment that the government intended to protect sensitive information and stop illicit exports that might advance other nuclear weapon programs.
A colorful character
Mahmood is reported to have resigned from Pakistan’s nuclear agency in the spring of 1999 to protest his government’s willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Pakistan expressed soon after it conducted a series of underground nuclear tests in May 1998. Mahmood spoke and wrote widely against joining the treaty, arguing that it would impose huge political and military costs, but provide few rewards. In his view, “If we keep developing nuclear technology on the path of self-reliance, and also extend cooperation to other countries in this field, shall we not be the gainers ultimately?”1
Mahmood was pressured to resign, in part because the U.S. government wanted him removed after learning of his sympathies for militant Islamic groups. Mahmood publicly supported the Taliban, and in speeches at Pakistani universities he suggested that Taliban rule should serve as a model for Pakistan.2 Even after September 11, he continued to support the regime.
Senior Pakistani officials are reported to have been concerned about Mahmood’s promotion of the idea of producing weapon-grade plutonium and uranium to help equip other Islamic nations. He described Pakistan’s nuclear capability as “the property of a whole Ummah [Muslim community].”3
An illustrious career. Mahmood returned home after studying nuclear engineering in Britain in the 1960s. He had a long career in Pakistan’s nuclear program and held a variety of senior positions. He had been a director of the nation’s nuclear program and served in key positions until his retirement.
A report in the Times of India said that Mahmood came to prominence in the 1970s after developing a technique to detect heavy water leaks in steam pipes at the Canadian-supplied Knapp nuclear power reactor near Karachi, using a device patented in his name in Canada and known worldwide under his initials as the “SBM Probe.”4 He also published articles on electric motors used in radiation environments, quality assurance, technology transfer, and project management.
His son told the November 8, 2001 Guardian that his father had wept after India conducted its first underground nuclear test in 1974, and that he vowed then to make Pakistan an atomic power. A few months after the Indian test, President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto called a meeting of his best nuclear scientists to discuss Pakistan’s reaction. Although Mahmood was a junior scientist at the time, he argued strenuously in favor of building nuclear weapons and recommended buying necessary items through a secret program.
Mahmood worked on Pakistan’s secret gas centrifuge program, which ultimately produced the highly enriched uranium used in its nuclear weapons, and he is credited with playing a pioneering role in establishing Pakistan’s uranium enrichment project. Abdul Qadeer (A. Q.) Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s uranium enrichment program, took over the project some time later.
Mahmood’s most prestigious assignment was designing the Khushab reactor, an unsafeguarded reactor project that depended extensively on illicit procurement from abroad. After the reactor went critical in April 1998, Mahmood identified himself as its chief designer and director and said that with this reactor (which can produce enough plutonium for two to three nuclear weapons per year) Pakistan had “acquired the capability to produce . . . boosted thermonuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs.”
The occult. Mahmood has had a bizarre fascination with the occult and has written a series of controversial, pseudoscientific papers. In 1987, he published the 232-page treatise Doomsday and Life After Death—The Ultimate Fate of the Universe as Seen Through the Holy Quran. This collection, based on Islamic teachings, included a chapter in which he explained how the world will end and theorized that his “scientific mind can work backward and analyze the actual mechanism . . . of the great upheaval before the Earth’s Doomsday.”
In Cosmology and Human Destiny, published in 1998, Mahmood argued that sunspots have influenced major human events, including the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and World War II. He concluded that governments across the world “are already being subjected to great emotional aggression under the catalytic effect of the abnormally high sunspot activity under which they are most likely to adapt aggression as the natural solution for their problems.”
A friend, Farhatullah Babar, a media adviser to the Pakistan Peoples’ Party, said that Mahmood predicted in Cosmology and Human Destiny that “the year 2002 was likely to be a year of maximum sunspot activity. It means upheaval, particularly on the Indian subcontinent, with the possibility of nuclear exchanges.”5 One passage of the book reportedly states: “At the international level, terrorism will rule; and in this scenario use of mass destruction weapons cannot be ruled out. Millions, by 2002, may die through mass destruction weapons, hunger, disease, street violence, terrorist attacks, and suicide.”
A follower of Israr Ahmad. Mahmood is a devout follower of Israr Ahmad, a radical pro-Taliban Islamic cleric. Ahmad advocates the creation of a “true Islamic state” and rejects Western constitutional and democratic models. In October 2001, Ahmad predicted that Afghanistan would prove a graveyard for the United States.
The others
Less is known about Majeed, who retired in 2000 after a long and successful career in the Nuclear Materials Division of the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (Pinstech) at Rawalpindi. In the 1960s, Majeed trained at a plutonium facility in Belgium, and he spent some time in the 1970s or early 1980s at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. CNN and NBC reported that he was associated with New Labs at Rawalpindi, where plutonium was separated for nuclear weapons. He is an expert in nuclear fuels, according to the U.S. government, and published extensively in the 1980s and 1990s on nuclear detectors and the use of X-ray diffraction, fluorescence, and crystallography.
According to the November 1, 2001 New York Times, all seven members of UTN’s board of directors were detained, among them Mirza Yusef Baig, an industrialist who owns the largest foundry in Pakistan. Baig had extensive ties with the Taliban regime, and had several contracts to build schools, hospitals, government buildings, and a flour mill in Afghanistan.
Others may also have been detained. USA Today reported on November 15, 2001, that at least 10 Pakistani nuclear scientists had been contacted by representatives of the Taliban government and Al Qaeda during the previous two years. U.S. officials believe several scientists told Al Qaeda they would help with a nuclear project, provided they got approval from the Pakistani government. It is not known whether that approval was granted.
In December 2001, the media reported that two other Pakistani nuclear scientists, Suleiman Asad and Mohammed Ali Mukhtar, were wanted for questioning about their possible links to Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials suspected that the two had also been involved with UTN. Pakistani officials said they were unavailable—that they had been sent soon after September 11 to an undisclosed research project in Myanmar, a country run by a military dictator with strained relations with the United States and most of the rest of the world.6 Pakistani officials said they did not want to interrupt the scientists’ work by having them return to Pakistan for questioning.
Concern about other Pakistani nuclear scientists continued into the summer of 2002. The Wall Street Journal reported on June 14 that U.S. officials were worried about two others. Officials said that these other two unnamed scientists were veterans of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons complex and associates of Mahmood and Majeed, and that one was already suspected of trying to sell weapon designs to unsavory customers.
Although the United States did not know whether these two scientists had ever traveled to Afghanistan, U.S. analysts were concerned that they might somehow have passed information on building nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda.
What was found in Kabul
Suspicion about Mahmood and others at UTN increased in November 2001. After the fall of the Taliban, coalition forces and the media began to search UTN facilities in Kabul. Some of the records found there revealed that the charity did indeed help Afghanistan with educational material, road building, and flour mills. But other records demonstrated that UTN was very interested in weapons of mass destruction.
The first revelations followed visits to UTN headquarters (which also served as Mahmood’s residence while he was in Kabul) and to subsidiary offices. Documents and drawings found at a UTN house suggest that someone had a particular interest in biological weapons, and was even designing a crude system for delivering anthrax by balloon.
Among the documents found in Kabul was an unclassified 1997 U.S. draft environmental assessment titled “Renovation of Facilities and Increased Anthrax Vaccine Production and Testing at the Michigan Biologic Products Institute.” A reader had printed several stars in the top left corner of the cover page, probably implying that he thought the report was significant. The report contains sections on the disease, its threat, the vaccine, production issues, and immunization.
Hundreds of copies of another document, “The Biologic Warfare: An Imminent Danger,” were found in the same house. This four-page diatribe accused the United States of planning to conduct biological warfare against the international Muslim community, using anthrax. The document cites as evidence the vaccination of U.S. troops and the expansion of U.S. vaccine production, purportedly in advance of attacking the Ummah.
Other anthrax-related documents included a copy of the home page of a Web site that contained information about the use of anthrax as a weapon.
Mahmood concluded in the fall of 2001 that Taliban soldiers fighting against the Northern Alliance had been exposed to chemical and biological weapons supplied by the United States, basing his claim on statements made by doctors at a Kandahar hospital.7 According to Mahmood, U.S. and British experts were training the Northern Alliance in the use of chemical and biological weapons. He denied that Afghanistan had an anthrax factory, charging that “military sources” had fabricated the story so that any anthrax attack in Afghanistan could be blamed on emissions from the factory. He called for non-governmental organizations to “come and help the Afghan nation against such an attack.”
Also found were a series of illustrations running the length of one room in UTN’s headquarters in Kabul that showed how high-altitude balloons could be used to spread anthrax spores or cyanide.8 There were boxes of gas masks and many containers of chemicals. A second-floor workshop, where many of the documents were located, contained a disassembled rocket with solid propellant and a cylinder labeled “helium.”
Links to terrorist groups. Ingrid Arnesen, a senior CNN producer who visited many UTN and Al Qaeda houses in Afghanistan, found documents linking UTN to Jaish e Muhammad, the Army of the Prophet Mohammad, a Pakistani militant group that had been outlawed in the spring of 2002. In the main UTN office she found a decal celebrating the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
CNN personnel searched the offices of the Barakat Islami Investment General Trading and Contracting Co. Ltd. (BTC), located just off the dreary lobby of Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel. This office, which had been locked and abandoned before the fall of the Taliban, contained a number of documents describing UTN activities. Intelligence sources told CNN that the office was a branch of the Barakat network, which, according to the U.S. government, laundered money for Al Qaeda.
CNN found several drafts of a memorandum of understanding between UTN and Barakat, establishing a close working relationship to promote relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction of Afghanistan. The agreement was signed in Kabul on May 15, 2001, by Mahmood and Ghali Atia Alshamri, BTC’s president. They agreed to establish joint projects and share office space both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. They also agreed to share financial, technical, and human resources in all disciplines—commerce and industry, agriculture, banking and finance, health education, social welfare, communications, energy, minerals and mining, and research and development. According to these documents, BTC was working with Afghanistan’s minister of water and power, and UTN expected cooperation with BTC to accelerate the completion of its goals.
UTN’s public face
UTN’s stated mission was to focus on development, educational reform, and ways to feed the impoverished Afghan population. UTN officials also said they were guiding the Taliban in science-related matters.
According to Mahmood, he and his colleagues developed a large-scale investment plan aimed at establishing industrial networks.9 He said the Taliban had already agreed to many of their plans, including raising $100 million to build a dam and an oil refinery. They envisioned huge projects to develop Afghanistan’s energy, communication, and transportation infrastructure and to process Afghanistan’s abundant natural resources for use in Pakistan. To further their aims, they were creating a bank. UTN’s plan also called for developing final products in Pakistan, which would have been to Pakistan’s economic benefit. One day before his arrest, Mahmood bragged to the weekly Nida-i-Millat that if the United States had not attacked, Afghanistan would have developed into a strong industrial country during the next 10 years.
UTN was one of the few NGOs that had the approval of Mullah Omar, the head of Taliban Afghanistan. When UTN officials traveled to Afghanistan, their visas were sponsored by the Taliban’s ministry for mines and industry, whose head had a long association with bin Laden.
Nuclear dealings
According to Eurasianet.org, during his initial interrogations by U.S. and Pakistani officials, Mahmood denied having discussed nuclear matters with bin Laden or the Taliban. He “made his interrogators believe that that there was nothing wrong in his cooperation with Osama’s men and Taliban officials.” But after he and Majeed were told that the documents had been found in Kabul, they modified their statements.
According to the December 12, 2001 Washington Post, Mahmood and Majeed admitted that they had had long discussions with Al Qaeda officials in August 2001 about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Pakistani intelligence officials told the Post that they believe the scientists had used UTN as a cover for secret talks.
The Associated Press, quoting Mahmood’s son, reported in late November 2002 that bin Laden approached Mahmood several months before September 11, 2001, about making nuclear weapons. The son said his father had met bin Laden several times while visiting Afghanistan.
On December 20, 2001, based in part on the growing evidence of UTN’s assistance to Al Qaeda’s nuclear weapons effort, the Bush administration announced that it was adding the organization to the list of entities supporting terrorism. The president ordered the organization’s assets be frozen under Executive Order 13224, and also froze the assets of three key directors—Mahmood, Majeed, and Sheikh Mohammed Tufail, a board member who owns one of Pakistan’s leading engineering companies.
A “Fact Sheet” distributed by the White House at the time of the announcement alleged that:
• The nuclear scientists had close ties to bin Laden and the Taliban;
• During repeated visits to Afghanistan, they met with bin Laden, Al Qaeda leaders, and Mullah Omar, and discussed the development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons;
• In one meeting, a bin Laden associate indicated he had nuclear material and wanted to know how to use it to make a weapon. Mahmood provided information about the infrastructure needed for a nuclear weapon program and the effects of nuclear weapons;
• After the fall of the Taliban regime, searches of UTN locations in Kabul yielded documents outlining basic physics related to nuclear weapons (as well as a plan to kidnap a U.S. attaché); and
• UTN had links to the WAFA Humanitarian Organization and Al Rashid Trust, two other NGOs with ties to Al Qaeda that had been designated as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224.
Media reports shed further light on the meetings between UTN and Al Qaeda. According to the December 12, 2001 Washington Post, Pakistani officials said the scientists admitted meeting with bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and two others over two to three days in August 2001 at a compound in Kabul. The scientists described bin Laden as intensely interested in nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
Bin Laden indicated to them that he had obtained, or had access to, some type of radiological material that he said had been acquired by the radical Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Mahmood and Majeed reportedly told bin Laden that it would not be possible to manufacture a nuclear weapon from that material. They claimed they provided no material or specific plans to bin Laden, but rather engaged in wide-ranging “academic” discussions.
Another Pakistani official told the Post, however, that the scientists had spoken extensively about weapons of mass destruction with bin Laden. This official described the scientists as “very motivated” and “extremist in their views,” but added that they were “discussing things that didn’t materialize, but fall under the breaking secrets act.” A December 16, 2001 Post report indicated that Pakistani officials familiar with the interrogations said the scientists had provided detailed responses to bin Laden’s technical questions about the manufacture of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
Al Qaeda reportedly wanted the Pakistani scientists’ help in making radiological dispersal devices. The March 3, 2002 Sunday Times (of London) reported that Farhatullah Babar, who has known Mahmood for many years, said U.S. interrogators were unable to prove that work on a dispersal device had progressed beyond an agreement in principle. Babar added that he thought Mahmood would have been willing to make such a device, but that the September attacks had ended the plan.
British officials, quoted in the December 13, 2001 Guardian, said they believed that other Pakistani nuclear experts had offered their expertise. These officials said that former Pakistani technicians from the weapons program also visited Al Qaeda officials to advise them on how to build nuclear weapons.
In late January 2002, Pakistani officials said they had decided not to press criminal charges against Mahmood or Majeed, despite concluding that the scientists had violated their secrecy oath during trips to Afghanistan. Pakistan’s government was reportedly concerned that a trial would cause further international embarrassment and risk disclosure of nuclear secrets.
The scientists were released from detention but agreed to remain under government control (essentially under house arrest), submit to travel restrictions, and limit their communications.10
Pakistani officials claimed that because the scientists were not involved in the actual production of nuclear weapons, they were not capable of providing sensitive or important information to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Taking stock
On March 3, 2002, the Washington Post revealed that Mahmood had failed a half dozen lie detector tests. His reaction has been to profess poor health and portray himself as a misunderstood victim.
In an interview with the Post, published on the same day, Mahmood said he underwent lie detector tests several times, but: “I could never stay before the machine beyond a few minutes because of my age and health, as it was very strenuous exercise that made my blood pressure go erratic and rendered my heart unstable.” He added that during one test, he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.
In the August 2001 meetings, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have provided Al Qaeda a road map to building nuclear weapons. This information is typically very helpful in understanding the steps that must be accomplished in making a nuclear weapon, identifying the necessary equipment and technology, and locating suppliers of key equipment. In addition, Mahmood and his colleagues appear to have recruited other scientists with more direct knowledge of making nuclear weapons.
Evidence is also strong that these scientists provided significant assistance to Al Qaeda’s efforts to make radiation dispersal devices. However, the exact level of assistance remains uncertain.
It is unknown if they provided enough information to allow Al Qaeda to design a nuclear weapon. They do not appear to have fully cooperated with the Pakistani authorities, and establishing evidence of the transfer of a design would be difficult in the best of circumstances.
Transfer of sensitive nuclear weapons information could have happened in many ways. The scientists could have provided direct assistance to Al Qaeda’s nuclear weapons program, or they may have obtained secret documents during the course of their careers, which they passed to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Or they could have served as a funnel for assistance from other nuclear weapons experts.
The transfer of sensitive information by UTN officials or their colleagues could have taken place in Pakistan or in Afghanistan. UTN could have arranged the transfer of nuclear, or nuclear-related, hardware as well, but there is no evidence of such transfers.
The evidence to date supports the conclusion that UTN’s founders and their colleagues had not provided Al Qaeda with the necessary resources to make nuclear weapons by October 2001, even if Al Qaeda had somehow acquired enough separated plutonium or weapon-grade uranium to make a nuclear explosive. Al Qaeda’s nuclear program appears to have been relatively primitive, in spite of the group’s long-standing interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
Given the immense effort required, it is highly unlikely that UTN could have enabled Al Qaeda or the Taliban to build facilities to make plutonium or highly enriched uranium; the plutonium or uranium for a bomb would have had to come from a foreign source. But if the attacks on September 11 had not occurred, UTN officials would probably have provided extensive and ongoing assistance to Al Qaeda—a conclusion supported by the records found in UTN’s office in Kabul.
The Pakistani scientists who were involved in Afghanistan had long experience in supervising large, complicated projects. And they had multiple contacts within the Pakistani nuclear community, from which they could tap a reservoir of nuclear scientists and expertise. As a result, they were well positioned to make significant contributions to an Al Qaeda nuclear weapons program.
And Al Qaeda was well positioned to make use of their contributions. It was closely integrated into the Taliban regime, perhaps dominating it in military matters. An Al Qaeda nuclear weapons program could have had many of the characteristics of a national program, which would have made it easier to conduct the research and development necessary to build a crude nuclear explosive.
In addition, a quasi-national program would have been more likely to be successful in obtaining sensitive items than a terrorist group operating in a hostile country. UTN’s civilian projects could have served as a front for illicit procurement. If the Taliban government identified the end user of equipment as civilian, many sensitive items could have been easily imported.
Then, too, UTN officials would have had a unique advantage: Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program involved extensive illicit foreign procurement, and Mahmood himself had headed a large reactor project that imported quantities of sensitive technology, materials, components, and manufacturing equipment. He and his colleagues would have had extensive information about illicit procurement.
Several of UTN’s projects were designed to rebuild Afghanistan’s manufacturing, scientific, and engineering capabilities in universities and industries. Projects focused on reconstruction would have served as a convenient cover for importing sensitive items. And because many UTN projects were believed to be medical or humanitarian in nature, imports to these projects would probably have been exempt from the U.N. embargo on Afghanistan.
A surprising piece of information was UTN’s interest in uranium mining. It has been known for a long time that Afghanistan has uranium resources. But that Pakistani nuclear scientists and BTC were planning to extract uranium increases suspicions about their intentions. A nuclear weapon program would need uranium for components, or as a surrogate material for testing nuclear weapon designs or learning to make highly enriched uranium metal. Such a capability would also make any weapons program more indigenous.
Fortunately, the fall of the Taliban regime ended the threat that a quasi-national nuclear weapons program could have emerged in Afghanistan. But reconstructing what Al Qaeda learned or accomplished in its quest for nuclear weapons or radiation dispersal devices is difficult and time-consuming. Al Qaeda may know more about such weapons or may have made more progress in building them than Mahmood and Majeed have admitted. And because Al Qaeda is still believed to be actively seeking nuclear weapons, whatever the scientists provided may return to haunt us.
1. Sultan Mahmood and Muhammad Nasim, “CTBT: A Technical Assessment” (www.Pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2000/Jan/07/02.htm), Jan. 7, 2000.
2. Chidanand Rahghatta, “U.S. Spooked by ‘Spirited’ Pak Nuclear Scientist,” Times of India, Nov. 2, 2002.
3. Asmir Latif, “Two Pakistani Atomic Scientists Arrested,” Oct. 24, 2001 (www.islam online.net/English/News/2001-10/25/article3 .shtml).
4. Rahghatta, “U.S. Spooked by ‘Spirited’ Pak Nuclear Scientist.”
5. Quoted in “Bin Laden Almost Had Uranium Bomb,” Sunday Times (London), March 3, 2002.
6. David Sanger, Douglas Frantz, and James Risen, “Nuclear Experts in Pakistan May Have Links to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, Dec. 9, 2001.
7. “Pakistani Scientist Says No Anthrax Plant in Afghanistan, Discusses Prevention: U.S. Provides Chemical Weapons to Northern Alliance–Dr. Sultan,” Islamabad Khabrain, October 6, 2001, in Urdu (available in English from Foreign Broadcast Information Service, document number FBIS-NES-2001-1006).
8. For more detailed information about these drawings, see Chris Stephen, “Kabul House of Anthrax Secrets,” Evening Standard, Nov. 22, 2001; Douglas Frantz and David Rohde, “2 Pakistanis Linked to Papers on Anthrax Weapons,” New York Times, Nov. 28, 2001; and David Rohde, “Germ Weapon Plans Found at a Scientist’s House in Kabul,” New York Times, Dec. 1, 2001.
9. “Pro-Taliban Nuclear Scientist Planned Large-Scale Investment in Afghanistan,” Nawa-i-Waqt, October 31, 2001, in Urdu (in English, FBIS-NES-2001-1031).
10. Peter Baker and Kamran Khan, “Pakistan to Forgo Charges Against 2 Nuclear Scientists,” Washington Post, Jan. 30, 2002.
David Albright is the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C. Holly Higgins is a former research analyst at ISIS.
© 2003 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Cross-posted.
Another excellent article by Selig Harrison.
Nuclear proliferation: North Korea and Pakistan
Another excellent article by Selig Harrison.
Nuclear proliferation: North Korea and Pakistan
The United States need not make an either-or choice between keeping Pakistan as an ally against Al Qaeda and making sure that it stops transferring nuclear technology. Both critical objectives can be achieved with a determined carrot-and-stick diplomacy.
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Washington should insist on the intrusive inspections necessary to guard against nuclear transfers and the leakage of fissile material to terrorist groups. In return, the United States should offer Islamabad economic incentives, including access to the U.S. textile market, which Islamabad has been seeking in vain. If Musharraf balks, the administration should make clear that it will go ahead with sanctions and, if necessary, suspend all U.S. economic aid. <img src="http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/ubb/icons/icon14.gif" alt="" />
The "smoking gun" that triggered the U.S. confrontation with North Korea over the uranium issue last October was not discovered until August 2002. A high-level State Department source told me that a British intelligence agent inside the Pakistan High Commission in London found incriminating documents showing that Pakistan was still helping North Korea at that late date, three years after Musharraf took power.
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Perhaps the most compelling argument for a U.S. nuclear inspection regime in Pakistan is that its nuclear facilities are riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers who might smuggle fissile material out to terrorists. In addition to its 48 existing nuclear weapons, Pakistan is also believed to have enough fissile material in storage to make 52 more.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Are people familiar with the name Kim Myong Chol?
If not, and for those interested, it might be worth becoming familiar with this dude. He's the director of something called the Centre for Korean-American Peace, although you'd have to go back to the cold-war days to grasp the meaning of that one. But basically, he's a Japanese-Korean who has for sometime been the official "un-official" voice of N. Korea in certain things. (Like keeping N. Korea flush with Yen for example.)
Anyway, Mr Kim was kind enough to give an interview recently. And he dropped a gem:
He said that N Korea did NOT need to test it's nukes because they were recently tested in Pakistan!
You have to watch the interview** to understand the careful ambiguity of that statement. Mr Kim seems to have left it up in the air as to whether pakistan tested N Koreas nukes, or whether N Korea has Paksitan supplied, and therefore tested, nukes.
Note, he made the statement while threatening nuclear retaliation against S Korea, Japan and the US in the event of war.
A fascinating piece, given the role of Mr. Kim.
**No link just yet. I'll post the link to the interview and transcript when they come up, probably in a couple of days.
If not, and for those interested, it might be worth becoming familiar with this dude. He's the director of something called the Centre for Korean-American Peace, although you'd have to go back to the cold-war days to grasp the meaning of that one. But basically, he's a Japanese-Korean who has for sometime been the official "un-official" voice of N. Korea in certain things. (Like keeping N. Korea flush with Yen for example.)
Anyway, Mr Kim was kind enough to give an interview recently. And he dropped a gem:
He said that N Korea did NOT need to test it's nukes because they were recently tested in Pakistan!
You have to watch the interview** to understand the careful ambiguity of that statement. Mr Kim seems to have left it up in the air as to whether pakistan tested N Koreas nukes, or whether N Korea has Paksitan supplied, and therefore tested, nukes.
Note, he made the statement while threatening nuclear retaliation against S Korea, Japan and the US in the event of war.
A fascinating piece, given the role of Mr. Kim.
**No link just yet. I'll post the link to the interview and transcript when they come up, probably in a couple of days.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Link doesnt work. I'll post it if it comes up.
Accident at the N. Korean Tae-Po-Dong missile test site
Last year, there was a major explosion accident at the Tae-Po-Dong missile test site at Hwa-Dae, N. Hamkyung Province, N. Korea.
According to sources from Defense Ministry and USFK, there was a big explosion at the (rocket) engine test area of the site last November, which was observed by an American spy satellite. This information was relayed to S. Korean military authorities.
According to our sources, extensive damages were done to its facility and equipments. It would take a long period of time for N. Koreans to repair them. This would cause substantial delay of the N. Korean development of their long range missiles such as Tae-Po-Dong II.
Accident at the N. Korean Tae-Po-Dong missile test site
Last year, there was a major explosion accident at the Tae-Po-Dong missile test site at Hwa-Dae, N. Hamkyung Province, N. Korea.
According to sources from Defense Ministry and USFK, there was a big explosion at the (rocket) engine test area of the site last November, which was observed by an American spy satellite. This information was relayed to S. Korean military authorities.
According to our sources, extensive damages were done to its facility and equipments. It would take a long period of time for N. Koreans to repair them. This would cause substantial delay of the N. Korean development of their long range missiles such as Tae-Po-Dong II.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
According to my inside sources, this was a missile modified by KRL. The N Korean investigation team later found that the Pakis put the payload at the wrong end. Some even say RAW agent in KRL did this to fire up the warm relations between NK and TSP.According to sources from Defense Ministry and USFK, there was a big explosion at the (rocket) engine test area of the site last November, which was observed by an American spy satellite. This information was relayed to S. Korean military authorities.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Looks like TSPs dong arent going to get an upgrade anytime soon..
Explosion hit North Korea missile test site: report
A US spy satellite monitored a strong explosion that rocked North Korea's test site for ballistic missiles in November last year, South Korean reports said Monday.
Washington has passed information concerning the explosion to South Korean military authorities, according to Yonhap news agency.
The blast occurred during a missile engine test and crippled operations and facilities at North Korea's missile launch site at Musudan-ri, Hwadae county, northeast of Pyongyang, Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said.
The launch site in North Hamgyong province has been closely monitored by US spy satellites since Pyongyang sent shockwaves around the world by test-firing a Taepodong long-range ballistic missile that flew over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998.
The explosion caused extensive damage and has been delaying the development and test launch of North Korea's Taepodong missiles, Chosun said, adding fragments and debris flew several hundred meters (yards) across the launch site.
South Korean military officials declined to confirm the reports.
"We neither confirm nor deny the reports," a defense ministry official told
According to South Korean defence ministry data, North Korea is currently testing Taepodong-1 missiles with a range of 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) and is also developing a longer-range Taepodong-2.
Taepodong-2 could be capable of reaching parts of the continental United States.
North Korea launched at least two short-range land-to-ship missiles off its coasts earlier in February and March, sparking speculation that it would test-fire another ballistic missile.
North Korea, locked in a nuclear standoff with the United States, has indicated that Japan's recent spy satellite launch would free it from its commitment to a testing moratorium.
At a summit between the leaders of Japan and North Korea in September last year, North Korea pledged to extend its moratorium on ballistic missiles beyond 2003.
North Korea has vowed to boost its military strength, insisting it would be the next target of a pre-emptive US military attack to snuff out its suspected nuclear arms ambitions.
Explosion hit North Korea missile test site: report
A US spy satellite monitored a strong explosion that rocked North Korea's test site for ballistic missiles in November last year, South Korean reports said Monday.
Washington has passed information concerning the explosion to South Korean military authorities, according to Yonhap news agency.
The blast occurred during a missile engine test and crippled operations and facilities at North Korea's missile launch site at Musudan-ri, Hwadae county, northeast of Pyongyang, Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said.
The launch site in North Hamgyong province has been closely monitored by US spy satellites since Pyongyang sent shockwaves around the world by test-firing a Taepodong long-range ballistic missile that flew over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998.
The explosion caused extensive damage and has been delaying the development and test launch of North Korea's Taepodong missiles, Chosun said, adding fragments and debris flew several hundred meters (yards) across the launch site.
South Korean military officials declined to confirm the reports.
"We neither confirm nor deny the reports," a defense ministry official told
According to South Korean defence ministry data, North Korea is currently testing Taepodong-1 missiles with a range of 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) and is also developing a longer-range Taepodong-2.
Taepodong-2 could be capable of reaching parts of the continental United States.
North Korea launched at least two short-range land-to-ship missiles off its coasts earlier in February and March, sparking speculation that it would test-fire another ballistic missile.
North Korea, locked in a nuclear standoff with the United States, has indicated that Japan's recent spy satellite launch would free it from its commitment to a testing moratorium.
At a summit between the leaders of Japan and North Korea in September last year, North Korea pledged to extend its moratorium on ballistic missiles beyond 2003.
North Korea has vowed to boost its military strength, insisting it would be the next target of a pre-emptive US military attack to snuff out its suspected nuclear arms ambitions.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Hey folks, Rangudu esp, (got your email dude) and here are the links:
This is the front page to the ABC** show called Lateline where the interview took place. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/. Click on the "North korea threat grows" link.
Heres the transcript to the interview with the relevant section quoted:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s836878.htm (transcript of Kim Myong Chol interview).
**BTW, "ABC" stands for Aust. Brodcasting Corp. It is NOT a commercial org or equivalent to the US' ABC. It's the Aust. equivalent of PBS in the US.
This is the front page to the ABC** show called Lateline where the interview took place. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/. Click on the "North korea threat grows" link.
Heres the transcript to the interview with the relevant section quoted:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s836878.htm (transcript of Kim Myong Chol interview).
And heres the link to the video: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2003/04/20030421ll_myong_chol.ram.. . .KIM MYONG-CHOL: Yongbyon facility has 100 nuclear war heads, including hydrogen bomb.
TONY JONES: They certainly haven't done any testing of those, sir, how can they have 100 without anybody knowing?
KIM MYONG-CHOL: That is a North Korean technique.
America CIA intelligence always failure, blunder.
Pakistan did testing for North Korea.
That was no problem.
**BTW, "ABC" stands for Aust. Brodcasting Corp. It is NOT a commercial org or equivalent to the US' ABC. It's the Aust. equivalent of PBS in the US.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Is the interviewer deaf or what? Did the "Pakistan tested for NK" not register in his brain? These western interviewers come with a fixed set of questions and then read them out like a machine. How come nobody else on earth, apart from Goan, has taken note of this?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
BTW, how credible is this guy? ABC seems to think he's on par with the Iraqi (Mis)information minister.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Rangudu,
Not quite. You need to get a grasp of the cold war stuff to understand MyongChol's role. During the cold war, when various nations refused to recognise each other "officially", there were a series of standard "unofficial" "embassies". The Chinese for example, used to use their press bureaux and "tourist" agencies as "consulates" etc.
This was standard practice especially in countries that had a large Chinese population.
That's where MyongChol fits in. His credibility stems from the fact that he plays a dual role: To send unofficial "offical" messages, (like the above). But that would simply make him a mouthpiece, i.e. how do you know if you tell him something it gets back to the powers-that-be in NK? Answer: because of his role in the passing of mega-yen to N Korea. That last bit is crucial. Money from Japan is about 90% of NKorea's foreign exchange that doesn't come from proliferation activities.
The money trail is what guarantees that when you tell Myong-Chol something, it gets back to the Dear Leader. It's also why he has such credibility when he starts making such statements.
Sarma, are you really surprised that Paks role is ignored? After 9-11, people like Amin Saikal were all over the place here sticking it back to the Paks. Now that Pak's best-buddies with Dubya, trivial things like funding Atta or nuke cooperation with N Korea just ain't relevant.
It's only us dumb Yindoos that seem to think that's important. And wadda we know, eh?
Not quite. You need to get a grasp of the cold war stuff to understand MyongChol's role. During the cold war, when various nations refused to recognise each other "officially", there were a series of standard "unofficial" "embassies". The Chinese for example, used to use their press bureaux and "tourist" agencies as "consulates" etc.
This was standard practice especially in countries that had a large Chinese population.
That's where MyongChol fits in. His credibility stems from the fact that he plays a dual role: To send unofficial "offical" messages, (like the above). But that would simply make him a mouthpiece, i.e. how do you know if you tell him something it gets back to the powers-that-be in NK? Answer: because of his role in the passing of mega-yen to N Korea. That last bit is crucial. Money from Japan is about 90% of NKorea's foreign exchange that doesn't come from proliferation activities.
The money trail is what guarantees that when you tell Myong-Chol something, it gets back to the Dear Leader. It's also why he has such credibility when he starts making such statements.
Sarma, are you really surprised that Paks role is ignored? After 9-11, people like Amin Saikal were all over the place here sticking it back to the Paks. Now that Pak's best-buddies with Dubya, trivial things like funding Atta or nuke cooperation with N Korea just ain't relevant.
It's only us dumb Yindoos that seem to think that's important. And wadda we know, eh?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Thanks Goan. If that is the case, i.e. the powers that matter ignore the Paki-NK nexus, then why are we unable to conceal our glee? OK, this guy reveals what was obvious to everybody already. What is there to brand this as a gem? It is already lost in the cacophony.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Sarma, true:
But we gotta document this stuff. Y'see, when the N Korean fecal matter hits the rotating circular device in the ceiling, we'll all be able to say "Nyah, Nyah, Nyah, told-you-so, told-you-so", and fall about laughing our asse$ off.
And of course, there's the small point that the western media will have completely "forgotten" all about this suff by then and they will all proffess utter amazement at how their "ally" Pak stuffed them. And the SD/Woolsey types will get away with it again. So it might be worth having the type of evidence around that can, in a few years perhaps, be emailed to a Congressional hearing!
*sigh* not very good reasons, I grant you, but wtf, we do what we can to alert the world. If no-one's listening, that their problem eh?
But we gotta document this stuff. Y'see, when the N Korean fecal matter hits the rotating circular device in the ceiling, we'll all be able to say "Nyah, Nyah, Nyah, told-you-so, told-you-so", and fall about laughing our asse$ off.
And of course, there's the small point that the western media will have completely "forgotten" all about this suff by then and they will all proffess utter amazement at how their "ally" Pak stuffed them. And the SD/Woolsey types will get away with it again. So it might be worth having the type of evidence around that can, in a few years perhaps, be emailed to a Congressional hearing!
*sigh* not very good reasons, I grant you, but wtf, we do what we can to alert the world. If no-one's listening, that their problem eh?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
KG,
I get it now. Thanks.
But I'm dismayed by the ABC "journalist" treating this interview as some kind of joke.
I get it now. Thanks.
But I'm dismayed by the ABC "journalist" treating this interview as some kind of joke.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Up...This link is good now that NK says it has nukes
Documents’ prove Pakistan still helping North Korea
From the Daily Times.
Documents’ prove Pakistan still helping North Korea
From the Daily Times.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Transcripts of PBS "FrontLine" report titled "Kim's Nuclear Gamble"
NARRATOR: Sometime in the summer of 2002, the CIA, working with evidence that it had been collecting since the middle of Clinton's second term, concluded that North Korea was secretly pursuing an alternative nuclear weapons program.
MARTIN SMITH: Now, somewhere along the way, U.S. intelligence starts to report that they're on shopping trips, that they're in Pakistan buying high-frequency modulators, aluminum tubes.
DONALD GREGG: Apparently, we got definitive aerial photographs of equipment from Pakistan being delivered. It became a matter of certitude in July or August.
NARRATOR: They were buying equipment to build a uranium-enrichment plant. Uranium enrichment takes place in centrifuge tubes like these, but it takes two to three years to make enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb. But like the separate program at Yongbyon, it showed Kim's intent to go nuclear.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Cross posting. Given the new found sources of Nuclear Fuel, Nucleonics and Nuclear Waste -- they seem to have a good coverage about the proliferation activities of Pakistan (both clandestine acquisition and supply of design and materials).
I have managed to pick out a few of the articles from these sources and put them into a PDF file
Post your e-mails and I will send them to you.
Number Pages: 29
Number Articles: about 20-25 (haven't counted exactly)
PDF File Size: 180 Kb
I have managed to pick out a few of the articles from these sources and put them into a PDF file
Post your e-mails and I will send them to you.
Number Pages: 29
Number Articles: about 20-25 (haven't counted exactly)
PDF File Size: 180 Kb
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Pakistan BELIEVED DESIGN DATA SOURCE FOR CENTRIFUGES TO BE BUILT BY IRAN
Mark Hibbs, Bonn
01/20/2003
Nuclear Fuel
---------------
IRAN OBTAINED ENRICHMENT KNOW-HOW FROM Pakistan, INTELLIGENCE SAYS
01/16/2003
Nucleonics Week
--------------
P-5 STATES FEAR Pakistan MAY LEARN FROM CONTENTS OF IRAQ U.N. REPORT
Mark Hibbs, Bonn
12/19/2002
Nucleonics Week
----------------
SO FAR U.S. SKIRTING SANCTIONS ISSUE ON Pakistan'S CENTRIFUGE AID TO DPRK
By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
12/09/2002
Nuclear Fuel
---------------
CIA ASSESSMENT ON DPRK PRESUMES MASSIVE OUTSIDE HELP ON CENTRIFUGES
By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
11/25/2002
Nuclear Fuel
---------------
TWO PAKISTANI PLUTONIUM EXPERTS ARRESTED FOR TIES TO TALIBAN
Shahid-ur-Rehman Khan, Islamabad
11/01/2001
Nucleonics Week
------------
Pakistan NOW PRESSING CHINA ON FINANCING OF SECOND PWR
Mark Hibbs, Bonn
08/16/2001
Nucleonics Week
--------------
Some from top of the results
Mark Hibbs, Bonn
01/20/2003
Nuclear Fuel
---------------
IRAN OBTAINED ENRICHMENT KNOW-HOW FROM Pakistan, INTELLIGENCE SAYS
01/16/2003
Nucleonics Week
--------------
P-5 STATES FEAR Pakistan MAY LEARN FROM CONTENTS OF IRAQ U.N. REPORT
Mark Hibbs, Bonn
12/19/2002
Nucleonics Week
----------------
SO FAR U.S. SKIRTING SANCTIONS ISSUE ON Pakistan'S CENTRIFUGE AID TO DPRK
By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
12/09/2002
Nuclear Fuel
---------------
CIA ASSESSMENT ON DPRK PRESUMES MASSIVE OUTSIDE HELP ON CENTRIFUGES
By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
11/25/2002
Nuclear Fuel
---------------
TWO PAKISTANI PLUTONIUM EXPERTS ARRESTED FOR TIES TO TALIBAN
Shahid-ur-Rehman Khan, Islamabad
11/01/2001
Nucleonics Week
------------
Pakistan NOW PRESSING CHINA ON FINANCING OF SECOND PWR
Mark Hibbs, Bonn
08/16/2001
Nucleonics Week
--------------
Some from top of the results
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Excerpts from Avid's links:
<hr>
Nuclear Fuel
January 20, 2003
SECTION: Vol. 28, No. 2; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2164 words
HEADLINE: PAKISTAN BELIEVED DESIGN DATA SOURCE FOR CENTRIFUGES TO BE BUILT BY IRAN
BYLINE: Mark Hibbs, Bonn
Pakistan's nuclear program was the origin of gas centrifuge design information which the Islamic Republic of Iran may now be incorporated into a large-scale uranium enrichment facility, thought to be under construction in Natanz, Western intelligence sources said.
But according to sources, officials in Pakistan provided both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and years before Iran detailed centrifuge design information that had been under the control of the Khan Research Laboratory (KRL) in Kahuta.
In the case of the DPRK, the sources said, it is believed Pakistan provided Pyongyang design information for a proven subcritical machine (NF, 25 Nov. '02, 1) plus, one source said this month, a ''starter kit'' of component parts that may have contained several finished centrifuge rotor assemblies. The source said that Pakistan may also have provided the DPRK with some enriched uranium. That possibility, sources said, was taken into account by analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which two months ago projected as a ''consensus estimate'' that the DPRK would be capable of producing significant quantities of high-enriched uranium (HEU) as of 2005.
</font>
In the case of Iran, sources said that assistance provided by Pakistan experts was given out years before and may have been more circumscribed than that provided to the DPRK.....
One source claimed that Iran, like the DPRK, has relied on ''the only country in the world which has been selling its centrifuge know-how,'' and he asserted that Pakistan ''had cooperated'' with Iran in that regard.
NuclearFuel obtained a copy of a design blueprint for a centrifuge component believed to be identical with a part for the G-1 centrifuge, an early-design Urenco machine. In Europe, the design data for this component is highly classified and strictly proprietary. The blueprint had been provided to a European company by a Pakistan nuclear procurement official who during the late 1990s asked the firm to mass-produce the component in question and ship the finished parts to Pakistan. NuclearFuel shared the design data with officials in charge of the IAEA's investigation of Iraq's clandestine nuclear program. The IAEA then checked the blueprint against data in its files and reported back that the dimensions of the component matched those found on centrifuge blueprints which U.N. inspectors had unearthed in Iraq. ''The two designs are identical right to the millimeter,'' the official said.
</font>
<hr>
Nuclear Fuel
January 20, 2003
SECTION: Vol. 28, No. 2; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2164 words
HEADLINE: PAKISTAN BELIEVED DESIGN DATA SOURCE FOR CENTRIFUGES TO BE BUILT BY IRAN
BYLINE: Mark Hibbs, Bonn
Pakistan's nuclear program was the origin of gas centrifuge design information which the Islamic Republic of Iran may now be incorporated into a large-scale uranium enrichment facility, thought to be under construction in Natanz, Western intelligence sources said.
But according to sources, officials in Pakistan provided both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and years before Iran detailed centrifuge design information that had been under the control of the Khan Research Laboratory (KRL) in Kahuta.
In the case of the DPRK, the sources said, it is believed Pakistan provided Pyongyang design information for a proven subcritical machine (NF, 25 Nov. '02, 1) plus, one source said this month, a ''starter kit'' of component parts that may have contained several finished centrifuge rotor assemblies. The source said that Pakistan may also have provided the DPRK with some enriched uranium. That possibility, sources said, was taken into account by analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which two months ago projected as a ''consensus estimate'' that the DPRK would be capable of producing significant quantities of high-enriched uranium (HEU) as of 2005.
</font>In the case of Iran, sources said that assistance provided by Pakistan experts was given out years before and may have been more circumscribed than that provided to the DPRK.....
One source claimed that Iran, like the DPRK, has relied on ''the only country in the world which has been selling
its centrifuge know-how,'' and he asserted that Pakistan ''had cooperated'' with Iran in that regard.NuclearFuel obtained a copy of a design blueprint for a centrifuge component believed to be identical with a part for the G-1 centrifuge, an early-design Urenco machine. In Europe, the design data for this component is highly classified and strictly proprietary. The blueprint had been provided to a European company by a Pakistan nuclear procurement official who during the late 1990s asked the firm to mass-produce the component in question and ship the finished parts to Pakistan. NuclearFuel shared the design data with officials in charge of the IAEA's investigation of Iraq's clandestine nuclear program. The IAEA then checked the blueprint against data in its files and reported back that the dimensions of the component matched those found on centrifuge blueprints which U.N. inspectors had unearthed in Iraq. ''The two designs are identical right to the millimeter,'' the official said.
</font>
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Nuclear Fuel
December 9, 2002
SECTION: Vol. 27, No. 25; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1137 words
HEADLINE: SO FAR U.S. SKIRTING SANCTIONS ISSUE ON PAKISTAN'S CENTRIFUGE AID TO DPRK
BYLINE: By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
BODY:
...
Western government officials and enrichment experts told NuclearFuel that the CIA estimate was based on information showing that the DPRK had obtained massive foreign assistance from third parties, chiefly Pakistan, in manufacturing centrifuges based on a complete design package for a proven centrifuge (NF, 25 Nov., 1).
Thus far, U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, have neither confirmed nor denied that Pakistan provided centrifuge aid to the DPRK. State Department officials have brushed off the matter by distinguishing between assurances from Pakistan that it is currently not providing assistance to North Korea, and Pakistan's past behavior. They have refused to comment on what the U.S. believes Pakistan may have provided the DPRK in the past. Since mid-October, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has reiterated categorical denials that Pakistan has provided any nuclear aid to the DPRK at any time.
Western sources, however, continue to maintain that the data suggesting that the DPRK obtained significant aid from Pakistan is uncontestable.
...one source said .. that the administration ''has been simply shocked''
December 9, 2002
SECTION: Vol. 27, No. 25; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 1137 words
HEADLINE: SO FAR U.S. SKIRTING SANCTIONS ISSUE ON PAKISTAN'S CENTRIFUGE AID TO DPRK
BYLINE: By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
BODY:
...
Western government officials and enrichment experts told NuclearFuel that the CIA estimate was based on information showing that the DPRK had obtained massive foreign assistance from third parties, chiefly Pakistan, in manufacturing centrifuges based on a complete design package for a proven centrifuge (NF, 25 Nov., 1).
Thus far, U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, have neither confirmed nor denied that Pakistan provided centrifuge aid to the DPRK. State Department officials have brushed off the matter by distinguishing between assurances from Pakistan that it is currently not providing assistance to North Korea, and Pakistan's past behavior. They have refused to comment on what the U.S. believes Pakistan may have provided the DPRK in the past. Since mid-October, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has reiterated categorical denials that Pakistan has provided any nuclear aid to the DPRK at any time.
Western sources, however, continue to maintain that the data suggesting that the DPRK obtained significant aid from Pakistan is uncontestable.
...one source said .. that the administration ''has been simply shocked''
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Nuclear Fuel
November 25, 2002
SECTION: Vol. 27, No. 24; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1239 words
HEADLINE: CIA ASSESSMENT ON DPRK PRESUMES MASSIVE OUTSIDE HELP ON CENTRIFUGES
BYLINE: By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
BODY:
An estimate by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) predicting North Korea, ... presupposes that Pyongyang has obtained unprecedented assistance from foreign sources in building gas centrifuges, plus a complete design package for a proven subcritical centrifuge using aluminum, Western government officials and enrichment experts told NuclearFuel.
According to that analysis, the DPRK ''last year...began seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities.''
Western officials would not confirm a Japanese media report last week, based on unidentified sources, that Pakistan had exported between 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuge rotor assemblies to the DPRK.
Sources said that information coming to light suggested instead that <u>individuals with years of experience inside Pakistan's uranium enrichment program had given the DPRK the design package for an aluminum centrifuge, prototype components, and manufacturing and some diagnostic assistance, which might dramatically reduce the timeline for the DPRK to enrich uranium.</u>
Officials said that ... most of the assistance related to the rotor assembly itself came from Pakistan, including some 6000-grade aluminum used in the components.
Sources said they believed that the DPRK obtained from Pakistan the design of an aluminum centrifuge with at least some characteristics of the CNOR/SNOR design which Pakistan stole from the Urenco program during the 1970s (Nucleonics Week, 1 Nov., 1).
Western officials and experts said it would certainly be technically feasible for Pakistan to have manufactured a few thousand complete rotor assemblies and to have brought machines to the DPRK for assembly. However, for reasons of efficiency it is preferable to assemble machines on site. The DPRK might have brought to the erection site centrifuges pre-assembled save for the positioning of the bottom bearing, experts said, but pre-assembly would imply that scoops inside the rotor tubes would be out of place, that many machines would fail initially, and that many more would crash prematurely during operation.
Sources said that because the DPRK wants to enrich uranium to weapons-grade as fast as possible, it probably would make such sacrifices.
November 25, 2002
SECTION: Vol. 27, No. 24; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1239 words
HEADLINE: CIA ASSESSMENT ON DPRK PRESUMES MASSIVE OUTSIDE HELP ON CENTRIFUGES
BYLINE: By Mark Hibbs, Bonn
BODY:
An estimate by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) predicting North Korea, ... presupposes that Pyongyang has obtained unprecedented assistance from foreign sources in building gas centrifuges, plus a complete design package for a proven subcritical centrifuge using aluminum, Western government officials and enrichment experts told NuclearFuel.
According to that analysis, the DPRK ''last year...began seeking centrifuge-related materials in large quantities.''
Western officials would not confirm a Japanese media report last week, based on unidentified sources, that Pakistan had exported between 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuge rotor assemblies to the DPRK.
Sources said that information coming to light suggested instead that <u>individuals with years of experience inside Pakistan's uranium enrichment program had given the DPRK the design package for an aluminum centrifuge, prototype components, and manufacturing and some diagnostic assistance, which might dramatically reduce the timeline for the DPRK to enrich uranium.</u>
Officials said that ... most of the assistance related to the rotor assembly itself came from Pakistan, including some 6000-grade aluminum used in the components.
Sources said they believed that the DPRK obtained from Pakistan the design of an aluminum centrifuge with at least some characteristics of the CNOR/SNOR design which Pakistan stole from the Urenco program during the 1970s (Nucleonics Week, 1 Nov., 1).
Western officials and experts said it would certainly be technically feasible for Pakistan to have manufactured a few thousand complete rotor assemblies and to have brought machines to the DPRK for assembly. However, for reasons of efficiency it is preferable to assemble machines on site. The DPRK might have brought to the erection site centrifuges pre-assembled save for the positioning of the bottom bearing, experts said, but pre-assembly would imply that scoops inside the rotor tubes would be out of place, that many machines would fail initially, and that many more would crash prematurely during operation.
Sources said that because the DPRK wants to enrich uranium to weapons-grade as fast as possible, it probably would make such sacrifices.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Sources said that information coming to light suggested instead that individuals with years of experience inside Pakistan's uranium enrichment program had given the DPRK the design package for an aluminum centrifuge, prototype components, and manufacturing and some diagnostic assistance, which might dramatically reduce the timeline for the DPRK to enrich uranium.
Officials said that ... most of the assistance related to the rotor assembly itself came from Pakistan, including some 6000-grade aluminum used in the components.
Sources said they believed that the DPRK obtained from Pakistan the design of an aluminum centrifuge with at least some characteristics of the CNOR/SNOR design which Pakistan stole from the Urenco program during the 1970s (Nucleonics Week, 1 Nov., 1).
If ever the CIA and my government should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I would like to find out the relationship between Mansur Ijaz's father, a nuclear scientist (who essentially started the Pakistani Nuclear Program) and Saudi Arabia (I have also read somewhere that the father's dying wish for his son Mansur was to carry out work for "Islamic causes").
It is my hunch that Mr. Ijaz's father was instrumental in obtaining the financial backing for the Islamic nuclear bomb fabricated in Pakistan in return for Mr. Ijaz's father masterminding transfer of nuclear bomb and technology to KSA etc.
At the very least, probable cause exists for further investigation into this link.
Officials said that ... most of the assistance related to the rotor assembly itself came from Pakistan, including some 6000-grade aluminum used in the components.
Sources said they believed that the DPRK obtained from Pakistan the design of an aluminum centrifuge with at least some characteristics of the CNOR/SNOR design which Pakistan stole from the Urenco program during the 1970s (Nucleonics Week, 1 Nov., 1).
If ever the CIA and my government should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I would like to find out the relationship between Mansur Ijaz's father, a nuclear scientist (who essentially started the Pakistani Nuclear Program) and Saudi Arabia (I have also read somewhere that the father's dying wish for his son Mansur was to carry out work for "Islamic causes").
It is my hunch that Mr. Ijaz's father was instrumental in obtaining the financial backing for the Islamic nuclear bomb fabricated in Pakistan in return for Mr. Ijaz's father masterminding transfer of nuclear bomb and technology to KSA etc.
At the very least, probable cause exists for further investigation into this link.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Commie rat part of TSP-NK nuke deal..
China, Japan, and General Xiong
A - perhaps the - key player on the Chinese side is the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) deputy chief of staff (for intelligence) General Xiong Guangkai. To some he is known as the butcher of Beijing. He ran the second department of military intelligence ("Er Bu") during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and is widely believed to have deployed some of his men as agents provocateurs at the time. To the United States, he is known as the guy who in 1996 said the US would not defend Taiwan as "Americans care more about Los Angeles than Taipei" - an innocent reference to China's nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability.
And he is the arranger of past (and present?) military equipment sales and production agreements - with Pakistan, Iran and others. US intelligence suspects him of having been involved in the Pakistan-North Korea deal that sent missile technology south in return for uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
Among recent diplomatic ventures are a February meeting in Beijing with former Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto at a conference by the Chinese Institute of International Strategic Studies (which Xiong heads) and a peculiar trip to Pakistan in March, where he signed new military cooperation and production agreements, reasserting Beijing's influence in Islamabad. His most recent trip to the United States appears to have been last December when military-to-military contacts between the US and China were formally resumed.
China, Japan, and General Xiong
A - perhaps the - key player on the Chinese side is the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) deputy chief of staff (for intelligence) General Xiong Guangkai. To some he is known as the butcher of Beijing. He ran the second department of military intelligence ("Er Bu") during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and is widely believed to have deployed some of his men as agents provocateurs at the time. To the United States, he is known as the guy who in 1996 said the US would not defend Taiwan as "Americans care more about Los Angeles than Taipei" - an innocent reference to China's nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability.
And he is the arranger of past (and present?) military equipment sales and production agreements - with Pakistan, Iran and others. US intelligence suspects him of having been involved in the Pakistan-North Korea deal that sent missile technology south in return for uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
Among recent diplomatic ventures are a February meeting in Beijing with former Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto at a conference by the Chinese Institute of International Strategic Studies (which Xiong heads) and a peculiar trip to Pakistan in March, where he signed new military cooperation and production agreements, reasserting Beijing's influence in Islamabad. His most recent trip to the United States appears to have been last December when military-to-military contacts between the US and China were formally resumed.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Very interesting thing this US concern for H&D of TSP. Looks like TSP can do no wrong! I think TSP has uncle's number and can get away with anything. Must be all the nefarious plots they wee together involved in. Cant be SU for they are gone and no one regrets the demise. So who were these two working against that uncle doesnt want revealed? Note the sublte hint that the US plans to emphasize China and Russian role from now on. At this rate can anyone believe anything coming out of DC?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
So who were these two working against that uncle doesnt want revealed?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
seems to me Pak has promised Usa to work against PRC 100% and
promised PRC to work against USa 200% and promised the islamists to work against India,usa,israel,china 300%.
Usa believes that catching a few flea-bitten ak-keeda
soldiery (mid level managers) is more valuable than putting
this mad dog to sleep.
time will tell. I am not even going to live near washington or
NYC by a long shot - let those who make such decisions
bear the risk.
promised PRC to work against USa 200% and promised the islamists to work against India,usa,israel,china 300%.
Usa believes that catching a few flea-bitten ak-keeda
soldiery (mid level managers) is more valuable than putting
this mad dog to sleep.
time will tell. I am not even going to live near washington or
NYC by a long shot - let those who make such decisions
bear the risk.
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Guys, I've been out of town, but I must have missed the discussion here on a very important point.
WHY did Jamali offer to denuclearize?
Of course ABV said :p but consider the significance of the offer. Were they SOOOOO sure that India would not call their bluff?
Or aren't they themselves bluffing, as I said last June? Don't want to start another thread on this, but hey?
WHY did Jamali offer to denuclearize?
Of course ABV said :p but consider the significance of the offer. Were they SOOOOO sure that India would not call their bluff?
Or aren't they themselves bluffing, as I said last June? Don't want to start another thread on this, but hey?
Re: Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 14 Jan 2003
Narayanan,
It is entirely possible that the offer was real. It is an excellent cover for deniable nuclear and WMD threats/strikes by the Army of Islam. I would not be surprised if Jamali comes out publicly and unilaterally declares Pakistan's denuclearization. It is easy for him to do this because he knows the following thing:
1. He can always get nukes from China when the need arises.
2. He can pretend that Pakistan does not have nuclear weapons while "Al Quaeda" magically gets them. Effectively creating space for nuclear blackmail and WMD attacks of a different sort.
The only thing that prevents this option from being taken seems to be that without nuclear weapons, Musharraf has no real power in Pakistan, and the LeT and its friends might as well get rid of him. There is an extreme version of this argument by Sunil S which states that there is some sort of a deterrence equation between Musharraf and the LeT post Afghanistan & Anaconda.
It is entirely possible that the offer was real. It is an excellent cover for deniable nuclear and WMD threats/strikes by the Army of Islam. I would not be surprised if Jamali comes out publicly and unilaterally declares Pakistan's denuclearization. It is easy for him to do this because he knows the following thing:
1. He can always get nukes from China when the need arises.
2. He can pretend that Pakistan does not have nuclear weapons while "Al Quaeda" magically gets them. Effectively creating space for nuclear blackmail and WMD attacks of a different sort.
The only thing that prevents this option from being taken seems to be that without nuclear weapons, Musharraf has no real power in Pakistan, and the LeT and its friends might as well get rid of him. There is an extreme version of this argument by Sunil S which states that there is some sort of a deterrence equation between Musharraf and the LeT post Afghanistan & Anaconda.