http://i.timeinc.net/time/covers/110105 ... allies.jpg
Nanna Munna tera hai
duniya ka jihadi hai
bolo mere badsha
GUBO ki tayari hai..
Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation - 02 October 2004
A simplistic article from intelonline.net but nevertheless full of facts. Simplistic for it doenst understand the US need for TSP and KSA to control the third wave of Islamic political power. Seen in that light curbing Shia power is an imperative for this.
url: http://newsinsight.net/archivedebates/n ... recno=1075
[quote]Missing the chance
Nobody believes that A.Q.Khan was proliferating alone.
10 February 2005: When it comes to Pakistan, the Americans have a frustrating blindspot, a blindspot that ultimately destroys their own security. When Pakistan’s monster scientist, A.Q.Khan, confessed to proliferating to Iran, North Korea and Libya in January last year, it was clear that the Pakistan regime, especially the military, was involved. For his clandestine nuclear sales, Khan ran a huge operation, which involved, among other things, commandeering Pakistan air force transport planes at will, and no military will allow this unless it has a cut in the deal.
Indeed, looking back, Khan looks a patsy for a proliferating Pakistani regime. It is impossible that Khan managed his huge nuclear network by himself or his immediate family. It is impossible that the governments of Iran, Libya and North Korea would have dealt with even a rogue scientist without some sort of assurance from the Pakistan government. Even assuming Libya and Iran are beyond the pale, though they aren’t, and it was Iran which leaked Pakistani proliferation to the West and IAEA first, North Korea comes in the Chinese orbit, and any dealings with North Korea would have had Chinese and by that token Pakistani government consent.
So we are talking about governments proliferating, not individuals, for cash incentives, or trade in other non-tradables, like North Korea’s nuke-for-missiles deal with Pakistan. This makes it even more clear that A.Q.Khan was not acting alone, and Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s unconditional pardon to the scientist a month after his confession, and render him unavailable for interrogation by either IAEA non-proliferation specialists or Western intelligence agencies, confirms this notion. It was at Pakistan’s behest that the US dropped further investigations against Khan, as trade-off probably for hunting down the Al-Qaeda in the FATA areas, and later, for providing assistance in the planned invasion of Iran.
Which is why Time magazine’s newsbreak about US investigations of Khan’s role in proliferating to Saudi Arabia raises more questions than answers, and there is the uncomfortable feeling that the investigations will reach a deadend, because on one end of the deal is a key ally, Pakistan, and on the other end, not a key ally anymore, but still a significant friend, Saudi Arabia, and it is hard to see how the Bush administration can anger both, especially since either or both would be required against Iran. For the record, Pakistan has denied any proliferation to Saudi Arabia, and if any Saudi denials have come, they have certainly not been published. Likely as not, angry communications would have passed between Riyadh and Washington, since there are too many dirty US secrets with Saudi Arabia, but that does not alter the fact, of massive, sustained, and still continuing Pak-Saudi nuclear collaboration (Intelligence, “Pak-Saudi N-link alive,â€
url: http://newsinsight.net/archivedebates/n ... recno=1075
[quote]Missing the chance
Nobody believes that A.Q.Khan was proliferating alone.
10 February 2005: When it comes to Pakistan, the Americans have a frustrating blindspot, a blindspot that ultimately destroys their own security. When Pakistan’s monster scientist, A.Q.Khan, confessed to proliferating to Iran, North Korea and Libya in January last year, it was clear that the Pakistan regime, especially the military, was involved. For his clandestine nuclear sales, Khan ran a huge operation, which involved, among other things, commandeering Pakistan air force transport planes at will, and no military will allow this unless it has a cut in the deal.
Indeed, looking back, Khan looks a patsy for a proliferating Pakistani regime. It is impossible that Khan managed his huge nuclear network by himself or his immediate family. It is impossible that the governments of Iran, Libya and North Korea would have dealt with even a rogue scientist without some sort of assurance from the Pakistan government. Even assuming Libya and Iran are beyond the pale, though they aren’t, and it was Iran which leaked Pakistani proliferation to the West and IAEA first, North Korea comes in the Chinese orbit, and any dealings with North Korea would have had Chinese and by that token Pakistani government consent.
So we are talking about governments proliferating, not individuals, for cash incentives, or trade in other non-tradables, like North Korea’s nuke-for-missiles deal with Pakistan. This makes it even more clear that A.Q.Khan was not acting alone, and Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s unconditional pardon to the scientist a month after his confession, and render him unavailable for interrogation by either IAEA non-proliferation specialists or Western intelligence agencies, confirms this notion. It was at Pakistan’s behest that the US dropped further investigations against Khan, as trade-off probably for hunting down the Al-Qaeda in the FATA areas, and later, for providing assistance in the planned invasion of Iran.
Which is why Time magazine’s newsbreak about US investigations of Khan’s role in proliferating to Saudi Arabia raises more questions than answers, and there is the uncomfortable feeling that the investigations will reach a deadend, because on one end of the deal is a key ally, Pakistan, and on the other end, not a key ally anymore, but still a significant friend, Saudi Arabia, and it is hard to see how the Bush administration can anger both, especially since either or both would be required against Iran. For the record, Pakistan has denied any proliferation to Saudi Arabia, and if any Saudi denials have come, they have certainly not been published. Likely as not, angry communications would have passed between Riyadh and Washington, since there are too many dirty US secrets with Saudi Arabia, but that does not alter the fact, of massive, sustained, and still continuing Pak-Saudi nuclear collaboration (Intelligence, “Pak-Saudi N-link alive,â€
How nuclear scientists lost their papers
Writing in daily Pakistan, Tanvir Qaiser Shahid quoted from ISI officer Brigadier Tirmizi’s book an incident involving the Atomic Energy Commission of Pakistan (AECP). Dr Munir Ahmad Khan its chairman revealed that while on a tour of Europe the AECP officers lost their secret papers in a hotel. Later they reformulated the contents of the papers and presented their point of view in a meeting. But when the officers were returning to Pakistan even these papers were stolen. One officer went to sleep in the plane and someone took out the papers from his brief case. The other scientist was at the London airport talking on the phone with someone in London ran away with his brief case lying next to the phone booth.
Interesting Nuke Case or a famous case of RAW Grab ....
From TFT ---> Nuggets ...
Writing in daily Pakistan, Tanvir Qaiser Shahid quoted from ISI officer Brigadier Tirmizi’s book an incident involving the Atomic Energy Commission of Pakistan (AECP). Dr Munir Ahmad Khan its chairman revealed that while on a tour of Europe the AECP officers lost their secret papers in a hotel. Later they reformulated the contents of the papers and presented their point of view in a meeting. But when the officers were returning to Pakistan even these papers were stolen. One officer went to sleep in the plane and someone took out the papers from his brief case. The other scientist was at the London airport talking on the phone with someone in London ran away with his brief case lying next to the phone booth.
Interesting Nuke Case or a famous case of RAW Grab ....
From TFT ---> Nuggets ...
Ramana wrote:
Criminals commit crimes and then report various items used in the crime as "stolen" to dissociate themselves from the crime, and TSPians always think like criminals first.
It appears to me as a plausibly deniable excuse for TSP to claim that their scientists were robbed and hence did not voluntarily hand over the documents to whoever they actually wanted to hand them to. Two TSP scientists losing nuke-related docs at the same time is most likely not a coincidence.They seem to be so overconfident of themselves that they are violating all sorts of prudent measures like not carrying secret documents abroad unless they were getting those documents abroad and someone lese wanted a peek.
Criminals commit crimes and then report various items used in the crime as "stolen" to dissociate themselves from the crime, and TSPians always think like criminals first.
The Telegraph, UK. The Pakis finally admit that 2+2 is indeed equal to 4, even by their own special PakMath.
Our man sold secrets to Iran, admits Pakistan
Our man sold secrets to Iran, admits Pakistan
Pakistan has conceded for the first time that Dr A Q Khan, the rogue nuclear scientist who is under house arrest in Islamabad, passed secrets and equipment to Iranian officials and is now considered the "brain" behind the programme that has put Teheran on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons.
An investigation by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, details of which have been disclosed to The Telegraph, confirmed that Khan, a hero in Pakistan as the "Father of the Bomb", and his associates sold nuclear codes, materials, components and plans that left his "signature" at the core of the Iranian nuclear programme.
The admission came during private talks in Brussels at the end of last month between European Union officials and senior ministers from Pakistan and India. The EU officials were told that cooperation between Teheran and Khan, 68, and associates from his Khan Research Laboratories began in the mid-1990s and included more than a dozen meetings over several years.
Most of these meetings were between Mohammad Farooq, a centrifuge expert from KRL, and Iranians in Karachi, Kuala Lumpur and Teheran. Pakistani investigators have told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that centrifuge drawings acquired by Iran closely resemble the design of the first-generation Pakistan-1 centrifuge.
Khan also helped the Iranians to set up a secret procurement network involving companies and middlemen around the world, ISI investigators found. The IAEA told Pakistani officials that centrifuges they had discovered at the Doshan Tapeh military base in eastern Teheran closely resembled the more advanced Pakistan-2 centrifuges.
Apparently motivated by Islamic zeal in addition to financial gain, Khan, who was arrested in November 2003, devoted more than a decade to the spreading nuclear technology around the world. With increasing focus in Washington on a showdown with Iran, Khan's activities are being viewed with growing alarm.
Pakistan had previously resisted admitting Khan's role in Iran's nuclear plans for fear of diplomatic repercussions. It remains reluctant to co-operate fully with either the IAEA or President George W Bush, who has pressed Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, to allow the CIA to interrogate Khan.
The IAEA has not yet found conclusive evidence that Iran has a weapons programme and Teheran claims that it "plans to enrich only to the levels that are used to generate nuclear fuel". A CIA report, however, concluded this was a lie.
The ISI found that Khan and his associates had approached some potential buyers of weapons of mass destruction, including Saddam Hussein's regime. "Iraqi officials initially agreed but later backed out because they thought it might be a sting operation or a ploy by the US to implicate them," said one official.
Pakistani investigators found that Khan's network tried not only to satisfy existing demand but also to create new markets for their proliferation activities. "They started working it both ways. They provided options to those who wanted to buy this sensitive material but also developed new markets for their wares."
Western diplomats believe that Pakistan is afraid that making Khan available to the CIA directly would lift the lid on an extensive network of its army officers loyal to Khan. "This could expose the role of the Chinese in this international black market, or that of other countries that Pakistan cannot afford to antagonise," said an official involved in the investigations.
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Raj Malhotra
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I believe that both North Korea and Iran were pursuing bomb based on reactor grade plutonium. North korea may have achieved this aim and one of the bombs tested in pak may be from there.
note designs sold by pak are for 10kt heavy bombs but the yield in first chagai was around 25kt. so my guess is pak-chinese heu heavy nuke 10kt + north korea pu nuke 15kt.
the second test of 5kt may be heu small pak- weapon.
my belief is that pak is incapable of makin significant quantities of heu. their centrifuge tech is failure. iran has been taken for a ride by pak and now iran feeling that pak has cut a deal with uncle and is trying to fix it.
note designs sold by pak are for 10kt heavy bombs but the yield in first chagai was around 25kt. so my guess is pak-chinese heu heavy nuke 10kt + north korea pu nuke 15kt.
the second test of 5kt may be heu small pak- weapon.
my belief is that pak is incapable of makin significant quantities of heu. their centrifuge tech is failure. iran has been taken for a ride by pak and now iran feeling that pak has cut a deal with uncle and is trying to fix it.
INTERVIEW: Pakistan Min:No New Info On Khan Nuke Net -2
TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri said Wednesday that he didn't have any information on possible nuclear proliferation by disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan to more countries than earlier believed.
Last February, Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan after he confessed to supplying sensitive technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. But earlier this month Time magazine reported that U.S. officials were also investigating whether the scientist's black market network might have supplied Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, such as Egypt.
"As far as the United States is concerned, we have shared all the information. There's very close cooperation between the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and the United States," he said when asked about possible nuclear technology smuggling to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"And any information that we have, we have shared, not just with United States; for example, relevant information on Iran with the IAEA and Japan on North Korea. We are prepared, however, if there are new leads to investigate anything. We take our responsibility as a nuclear power very seriously," he told Dow Jones Newswires and CNBC Asia Pacific in an interview. The IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency - is the Vienna-based, U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Despite President George W. Bush's strong nonproliferation strategy, designation of Pakistan as a major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, and current consideration to sell it new weapons systems, Islamabad has repeatedly refused to allow Washington access to Khan to directly question him.
Kasuri reiterated his government's stance again Wednesday.
"The United States understands the sensitivity of this because A.Q. Khan was a national hero - until he was forced under investigation to confess to proliferation that you are referring to...He's practically being confined to his house," he said.
"Our friends trust us. They know that any lead that they will give will be thoroughly investigated."
However, earlier this month, a senior U.S. security official said that Washington is "particularly interested" in finding out whether Khan sold nuclear weapons technology or information to nations other than his confessed three.
"The question of whether there is a fourth customer or fifth customer is extremely important to us and that's one of the aspects of our continuing investigation that we're pursuing very vigorously," John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told Dow Jones and CNBC in an interview.
The non-NATO ally designation makes Pakistan eligible for priority delivery of defense material and for the stockpiling of military hardware. Other major non-NATO allies of the U.S. include Japan, Australia, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, South Korea, Argentina, New Zealand and the Philippines.
Indeed, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said earlier this month that Washington is considering an appeal from Pakistan for F-16 fighter aircraft - a request that has received a muted response from the U.S. in previous years.
However, Islamabad's nuclear rival, India, is also reportedly considering purchases of the Patriot missile-defense system and of the Lockheed Martin F-16.
The two nations have fought three wars and three military skirmishes since their independence from British rule in 1947 and have occasionally conducted ballistic missile tests.
Kasuri expressed interest in the F-16, but indicated wariness about arms sales to India that might upset the balance in the region.
"Of course F-16s and if anything is done to introduce new weapons systems in South Asia, which has an impact on Pakistan's defense, we'd expect the United States to be sensitive to our requirements and our needs - and our sensitivities," he said.
"We would expect an effective mechanism that does not dent the basic concept - and that is minimum deterrent. We maintain a credible deterrent against India and that it's in the interest of peace," he said.
Lockheed has increasingly pushed overseas sales of the F-16 since 1993, when the U.S. Air Force decided to curtail its procurement of the jets in favor of more modern aircraft.
TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri said Wednesday that he didn't have any information on possible nuclear proliferation by disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan to more countries than earlier believed.
Last February, Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan after he confessed to supplying sensitive technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. But earlier this month Time magazine reported that U.S. officials were also investigating whether the scientist's black market network might have supplied Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, such as Egypt.
"As far as the United States is concerned, we have shared all the information. There's very close cooperation between the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and the United States," he said when asked about possible nuclear technology smuggling to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"And any information that we have, we have shared, not just with United States; for example, relevant information on Iran with the IAEA and Japan on North Korea. We are prepared, however, if there are new leads to investigate anything. We take our responsibility as a nuclear power very seriously," he told Dow Jones Newswires and CNBC Asia Pacific in an interview. The IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency - is the Vienna-based, U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Despite President George W. Bush's strong nonproliferation strategy, designation of Pakistan as a major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, and current consideration to sell it new weapons systems, Islamabad has repeatedly refused to allow Washington access to Khan to directly question him.
Kasuri reiterated his government's stance again Wednesday.
"The United States understands the sensitivity of this because A.Q. Khan was a national hero - until he was forced under investigation to confess to proliferation that you are referring to...He's practically being confined to his house," he said.
"Our friends trust us. They know that any lead that they will give will be thoroughly investigated."
However, earlier this month, a senior U.S. security official said that Washington is "particularly interested" in finding out whether Khan sold nuclear weapons technology or information to nations other than his confessed three.
"The question of whether there is a fourth customer or fifth customer is extremely important to us and that's one of the aspects of our continuing investigation that we're pursuing very vigorously," John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told Dow Jones and CNBC in an interview.
The non-NATO ally designation makes Pakistan eligible for priority delivery of defense material and for the stockpiling of military hardware. Other major non-NATO allies of the U.S. include Japan, Australia, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, South Korea, Argentina, New Zealand and the Philippines.
Indeed, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said earlier this month that Washington is considering an appeal from Pakistan for F-16 fighter aircraft - a request that has received a muted response from the U.S. in previous years.
However, Islamabad's nuclear rival, India, is also reportedly considering purchases of the Patriot missile-defense system and of the Lockheed Martin F-16.
The two nations have fought three wars and three military skirmishes since their independence from British rule in 1947 and have occasionally conducted ballistic missile tests.
Kasuri expressed interest in the F-16, but indicated wariness about arms sales to India that might upset the balance in the region.
"Of course F-16s and if anything is done to introduce new weapons systems in South Asia, which has an impact on Pakistan's defense, we'd expect the United States to be sensitive to our requirements and our needs - and our sensitivities," he said.
"We would expect an effective mechanism that does not dent the basic concept - and that is minimum deterrent. We maintain a credible deterrent against India and that it's in the interest of peace," he said.
Lockheed has increasingly pushed overseas sales of the F-16 since 1993, when the U.S. Air Force decided to curtail its procurement of the jets in favor of more modern aircraft.
Slightly ld.. not sure if this was posted here earlier..
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_ ... 850000.htmKhan's nuke network still operational: Time
Asian News International
Recent investigations have revealed that the nuclear proliferation network once managed by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist AQ Khan is still operational.
"Nothing has changed,” Time quoted one of Khan’s former aides as saying. "The hardware is still available, and the network hasn’t stopped".
Slightly ld.. not sure if this was posted here earlier..
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_ ... 850000.htmKhan's nuke network still operational: Time
Asian News International
Recent investigations have revealed that the nuclear proliferation network once managed by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist AQ Khan is still operational.
"Nothing has changed,” Time quoted one of Khan’s former aides as saying. "The hardware is still available, and the network hasn’t stopped".
More shoes dropping.
Reuters: Khan Network Offered Iran Nuclear Kit-Wash Post
Which is based on this story coming up tomorrow in the Washington Post:
Iran Was Offered Nuclear Parts --
Secret Meeting in 1987 May Have Begun Program
Reuters: Khan Network Offered Iran Nuclear Kit-Wash Post
Which is based on this story coming up tomorrow in the Washington Post:
Iran Was Offered Nuclear Parts --
Secret Meeting in 1987 May Have Begun Program
Ooooo! Good Sunday this is for the PhotoChor. Need to post in full.
LA Times does a front page story as well:
A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout -The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation
By Douglas Frantz
Times Staff Writer
LA Times does a front page story as well:
A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout -The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation
By Douglas Frantz
Times Staff Writer
February 27, 2005
WASHINGTON — Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year.
Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes provide an excellent starting point for anyone trying to develop an effective atomic warhead.
"This involved the spread of very sensitive nuclear knowledge, and it is the most serious form of proliferation," one of the specialists said. Both described the designs on condition that their names be withheld because the plans are classified.
The sale of the plans is particularly troubling to some investigators because the transaction occurred at least 18 months after U.S. and British intelligence agencies concluded that Khan was running an international nuclear smuggling ring and identified Libya as a suspected customer, according to U.S. officials and a British government assessment.
Interviews with current and former government officials and intelligence agents and outside experts in Washington, Europe and the Middle East reveal a lengthy pattern of watching and waiting when it came to Khan and his illicit network.
The trail dated back more than 20 years as Khan went from a secretive procurer of technology for Pakistan's atomic weapons program, which he headed, to history's biggest independent seller of nuclear weapons equipment and expertise.
For most of those years, Khan's primary customers were Iran and North Korea. In 2002, President Bush said the countries were part of an "axis of evil," in part because of nuclear programs nourished by Khan and his network.
Despite knowing at least the broad outlines of Khan's activities, American intelligence agencies regularly objected to shutting down his operations. And policymakers in Washington repeatedly prioritized other strategic goals over stopping him, according to current and former officials.
Some officials said that even as the picture of the threat posed by Khan's operation got clearer and bigger in 2000 and 2001, the intelligence was too limited to act on.
Other officials said the CIA and the National Security Agency, which eavesdropped on Khan's communications, were so addicted to gathering information and so worried about compromising their electronic sources that they rebuffed efforts to roll up the operation for years.
"We could have stopped the Khan network, as we knew it, at any time," said Robert J. Einhorn, a top counter-proliferation official at the State Department from 1991 to August 2001. "The debate was, do you stop it now or do you watch it and understand it better so that you are in a stronger position to pull it up by the roots later? The case for waiting prevailed."
Current and former Bush administration officials say the patience paid off. They say that in late 2003, combined U.S. and British intelligence on Khan finally yielded enough information to persuade Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to relinquish his nuclear technology and turn over conclusive evidence used to shut down the Pakistani scientist, who by then had been removed as head of his nation's primary nuclear laboratory.
"A.Q. Khan is a textbook case of government doing things right," John S. Wolf, then assistant secretary of State for nonproliferation, said when Kadafi gave up his nuclear equipment.
Others say that the price of patience was too high, emphasizing that for years Khan fed the nuclear ambitions of countries that the U.S. says have ties to terrorism and pose major foreign policy problems.
"I don't see what was gained by waiting," said George Perkovich, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Iran got centrifuge equipment and knowledge at the very least, and possibly a weapons design. We don't even know what North Korea got."
An American diplomat in Europe was more blunt, saying, "It's absolutely shocking that Khan spread nuclear knowledge while he was being watched."
As a global inquiry into Khan's network enters its second year, investigators from several countries and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna are trying to answer two vital questions — how much damage did Khan do and how did he stay in business for so long?
The challenge has been made tougher by Pakistan's refusal to allow outside investigators to question Khan, who is under house arrest in Islamabad, and because his network began systematically shredding papers and deleting e-mails in the summer of 2002, after realizing it was under surveillance.
Investigators said the previously undisclosed destruction of records is making it harder to discover whether the network sold its deadly wares, including the warhead plans, to as yet unidentified countries or even extremist organizations. It also increases the chances that remnants of the ring will re-emerge. "Regrettably, they had a long time to destroy evidence," said a senior investigator who had interviewed members of the network. "They knew they were being watched."
A detailed chronology of the long history of Khan and the spies who watched him, based on extensive interviews and hundreds of pages of public and confidential records, provides an unusual look at the inherent tension between gathering intelligence and taking action, which allowed the scientist and his network of engineers and middlemen to operate unchecked.
*
Path to Deception
Abdul Qadeer Khan, believed to have been born in India in 1935, moved with his family to Pakistan in 1952 in the aftermath of ethnic violence in India. He was a bright student whose studies took him to Europe, where he eventually received a doctorate in metallurgy.
In May 1972, Khan started work for an engineering firm in Amsterdam that was a major subcontractor for Urenco, a British-Dutch-German consortium founded two years earlier to develop advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium for civilian power plants.
Though he was supposed to work only with material labeled confidential, over the next 3 1/2 years Khan got access to top-secret dossiers on every aspect of the enrichment process, according to a lengthy report prepared last year by Dutch anti-nuclear activists.
When he returned to Pakistan in December 1975 with his Dutch wife, Hendrina, and their two daughters, ostensibly for a holiday, he carried with him designs he had copied while working in the Netherlands, intelligence and law enforcement authorities said.
His timing was excellent. Pakistan had fought wars in 1965 and 1971 with neighboring India and the two countries were locked in a race to develop nuclear weapons.
Khan mailed his resignation letter to Amsterdam and quickly assumed a primary role in the Pakistani government's nuclear program, which would succeed in testing its first bombs in 1998 partly because of Khan's skills.
Initially, he served under the nation's atomic energy commission, but he bristled at the constraints and won the right to work without official oversight.
"He asked for and received autonomy and an unlimited budget," said Feroz Khan, a retired Pakistani brigadier general and nuclear expert who is not related to A.Q. Khan. "There was no accountability."
Enriching natural uranium to weapons grade is a complicated process requiring huge arrays of slim cylinders called centrifuges and sophisticated machinery to regulate them as they spin at twice the speed of sound.
Pakistan did not have the material to manufacture the delicately balanced centrifuges or much of the other equipment required, so Khan used his outsize budget to establish a clandestine procurement network.
The first purchases were from companies associated with Urenco and were orchestrated through Pakistani embassies in Europe in 1976, creating what became known as the Pakistani pipeline.
Alarm bells rang in 1978 after a British company sold Pakistan high-frequency electronic devices used in the enrichment process. The ensuing investigations pointed at Khan, according to media reports at the time.
President Jimmy Carter cut off U.S. assistance to Pakistan in April 1979 when it was discovered that Khan had stolen plans from Urenco and was using them in Pakistan's nuclear effort.
But the U.S. sanctions were short-lived. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year pushed counter-proliferation concerns to the back burner and lowered the heat on Khan and Pakistan for the next decade. During that period, Islamabad was the principal conduit for huge amounts of U.S. aid to anti-Soviet fighters in neighboring Afghanistan.
The Dutch were unable to prove that Khan stole the designs, but in 1983 he was convicted in absentia of writing two letters seeking classified nuclear information. The conviction was overturned because he never received a proper summons.
A former CIA agent who worked in the region said the Reagan administration had "incontrovertible" knowledge of Pakistan's progress toward the bomb and Khan's central role in procuring material, but chose not to act.
The pattern and priorities had been established. Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations sent $600 million a year in military and economic assistance to Pakistan for its help on Afghanistan, according to a report last month by the Congressional Research Service.
Not until the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan did the first President Bush reimpose sanctions on Pakistan, in 1990, for developing atomic weapons.
But U.S. intelligence had not lost complete sight of Khan. The CIA was told in 1989 that the Pakistani scientist was providing centrifuge designs and parts to Iran, said two former U.S. officials who read the reports.
Not for the first time, however, U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers underestimated Khan's talent for spreading nuclear know-how.
"We knew he traveled a lot, but we thought it was probably related to imports rather than exports," said Einhorn, who read about the Iran link when he joined the State Department nonproliferation bureau in 1991. "We thought the Iran connection had fallen off during the 1990s and that Iran was mainly looking to Russia rather than Pakistan for its nuclear supplies."
In fact, Khan started providing material to Iran in 1987 and continued as its primary nuclear supplier for at least a decade, recent reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency state. As demand for his wares grew, he turned for help to many of the companies and engineers supplying Pakistan.
*
Tapping Old Contacts
The network was a sort of old boys club from Urenco. It included Dutch, German and Swiss members, former Urenco subcontractors who had gotten rich helping Khan turn Pakistan into a nuclear power.
But rivalries developed within the group as orders from Iran slowed in the mid-1990s, and Khan, even as he ran Pakistan's enrichment facilities, tried to expand his illicit sales to other countries, investigators said.
"Some guys got along and some guys didn't," said an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity. "A.Q. dealt with them individually. There were some group meetings, but there was never a meeting of all the major players at once."
Khan developed a particularly close friendship with B.S.A. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman who eventually turned his computer business in Dubai into the network's operational base. The two men traveled together frequently and twice made the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
Khan visited at least a dozen countries in the Middle East and Africa in search of new customers for the network, but nuclear weapons proved a harder sell than he had imagined, investigators said.
In 1997, he got a cold reception when he told an audience of scientists and military officers in Damascus that Syria should acquire its own nuclear weapons to counter Israel's arsenal, said a former Syrian official who attended the talk.
But that same year he appeared to strike it rich. At a series of meetings in Istanbul, Turkey, and Casablanca, Morocco, he made a deal to sell Libya a complete bomb-making factory for approximately $100 million.
This appears to have been the network's biggest transaction, and it led Khan to take a risk and expand beyond the original participants and his own safe base in Pakistan.
The Libya deal was taking shape just as Khan reaped enormous benefits at home. On May 28, 1998, the desert of southwestern Pakistan rumbled deeply as five nuclear weapons were detonated. It was Pakistan's first nuclear test and it answered India's detonation of three bombs two weeks earlier.
Already a powerful figure, Khan basked in nationwide adulation as he was dubbed the father of the Islamic bomb, a title that many experts say exaggerated his role. Still, he boasted in an interview with a Pakistani magazine about evading efforts to stop him and exploiting Western greed.
"Many suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with the figures and numbers of instruments and materials," he said. "They begged us to purchase their goods."
Even with his role in making nuclear weapons now in the open, Khan continued to quietly make deals with other nations. In late 1998, U.S. intelligence picked up evidence that he was trading enrichment technology to North Korea in return for missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads into India, a former senior U.S. official who read the reports said.
The suspicions were added to a growing, highly classified chronology of Khan's actions kept at the State Department, said another former senior official.
In January 1999, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott raised the North Korean deal at a lunch in Islamabad with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He asked Sharif to stop the illicit trade in nuclear technology and end the deals with Pyongyang, Talbott wrote in his 2004 book "Engaging India." A second U.S. official who attended the meeting corroborated the account.
Though Talbott did not mention Khan by name, the second official said it was clear that Talbott was talking about Khan when he asked for a halt to the nuclear proliferation and the deals with North Korea, which intelligence data showed were being handled directly by Khan through his research laboratory in Pakistan.
"It is true that Pakistan has important defense cooperation with North Korea, but it is for conventional military equipment," Sharif replied, according to the second official. "Nothing nuclear is taking place."
Former Pakistani officials said the Americans never provided hard information that could have led to action against Khan, though critics argue that the scientist could not have conducted his business without at least a wink and a nod from Pakistan's military establishment.
"They were very vague warnings and there was no real evidence or we would have acted," Feroz Khan, the former Pakistani brigadier general who is a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said in a telephone interview.
The situation for Abdul Qadeer Khan began to deteriorate after Sharif was ousted in a coup in October 1999 by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the head of the armed forces.
Aides to Musharraf said he tried almost immediately to assert control over the country's nuclear establishment, including imposing the first audit requirements on Khan Research Laboratory, the government complex renamed after him that was his base of operations.
Khan resisted and Musharraf ultimately forced him out as head of the lab, though he lavished praise on Khan at his retirement banquet, saying his team had "sweated, day and night, against all odds and obstacles, against international sanctions and sting operations, to create, literally out of nothing, with their bare hands, the pride of Pakistan's nuclear capability."
The unprecedented restrictions at home coincided with increasing demand for centrifuges and other goods for Libya's bomb-making factory. Khan responded by finding new sources of equipment in South Africa and Malaysia.
Pakistan was known in U.S. intelligence circles as a "hard target," which meant penetrating Khan's inner circle and his facilities there was extremely difficult. Pakistani authorities were aware of U.S. interest in their nuclear facilities and took steps to protect them and their scientists.
The shift to other locations for production created a new vulnerability that was quickly exploited by the U.S., most likely by eavesdropping on phone calls and monitoring e-mail.
"We were inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms," said George J. Tenet, the former director of the CIA, describing that period to an audience last year.
A former U.S. intelligence officer said the CIA and National Security Agency were focused on the Khan network and collecting important pieces of the puzzle, but both agencies argued for caution out of a strong desire to protect sources and methods.
"In the NSA's case, we could be talking about the potential compromise of a collection system costing millions of dollars or a specific, crucial source that would be evident if the information were acted on," the former officer said.
The best public source of information for what intelligence agencies were learning at the time is a report issued in July by a British government commission. Two U.S. officials described the report as an accurate reflection of information shared between the CIA and its British equivalent, MI6.
By April 2000, intelligence showed that Khan was supplying uranium enrichment equipment to at least one customer in the Middle East, thought to be Libya, the report says. Five months later, intelligence operatives learned that the network was mass producing centrifuge components for a major project.
When the new Bush administration came into office in January 2001, the CIA briefed officials at the National Security Council on the dangers posed by Khan. The NSC officials recognized the threat as well as the need to get as much information as possible before acting, said two people involved in the talks.
"The suspicion was that the intelligence guys were all about reporting and watching and they had to overcome that," said Richard Falkenrath, an NSC staff member at the time. "The other question was, 'What would we do about Khan, what would Pakistan tolerate?' "
Throughout 2001, the CIA and MI6 tracked Khan's activities. A comprehensive assessment in March 2002 concluded that Khan's network had moved its base to Dubai and established production facilities in Malaysia.
A few months later, new information led the agencies to conclude that Khan's network was central to a Libyan nuclear weapons program.
By January 2003, the British were concerned that "Khan's activities had now reached the point where it would be dangerous to allow them to go on," the report says.
Libyan officials later would tell the Americans and British that Khan had delivered the warhead plans to them in late 2001 or early 2002. Wolf, the former assistant secretary of State, said he was unsure whether the Americans or British knew about the plans until after the Libyans decided to give up their nuclear ambitions.
Even as the danger mounted, there was a new constraint on action. The terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, had restored Pakistan as a vital ally, and U.S. officials were reluctant to take any step that might jeopardize the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
*
Unraveling the Network
The endgame for Khan began in March 2003. Seif Islam, Kadafi's elder son, approached an MI6 agent in London with an offer to talk about rumors that Libya possessed weapons of mass destruction, several officials briefed on the episode said.
Intelligence agents from the CIA and MI6 held sporadic talks with the head of Libyan intelligence, Mousa Kusa, through the spring and summer. The U.S. and Britain wanted Libya to give up its chemical weaponry and nuclear technology, and Kadafi wanted assurances that in return economic sanctions hobbling its economy would be removed.
In August, with the issue still unresolved, British intelligence got a tip about a shipment that would be leaving Khan's factory in Malaysia for Libya. U.S. spy satellites tracked the shipment, and the vessel was eventually diverted by U.S. and Italian authorities to an Italian port, where five crates of delicate centrifuge components were unloaded.
U.S. officials involved in the episode said the interception finally persuaded the Libyan leader to give up his weapons programs, a decision Kadafi announced on Dec. 19, 2003.
As part of the deal, teams from the U.S., Britain and the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Libya in January 2004 to dismantle the 500 tons of nuclear equipment that Khan's network had shipped there. The most sensitive material was loaded onto a U.S. military cargo plane that had been stripped of its identifying marks and flown nonstop to the national weapons laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Among the items on the plane was a sealed pouch containing the warhead designs, said people involved in the shipment.
The two nuclear weapons specialists who examined the top-secret plans said the Libyans had handed them over in two plastic shopping bags. They said identifying marks had been removed but the designs were clearly for a warhead tested by China in 1966 and later provided to Pakistan.
One bag contained about 100 production drawings for fabricating the warhead; the other held hundreds of pages of handwritten notes and unclassified documents from sources such as the U.S. Department of Energy.
The notes, written in English by at least four people, were numbered sequentially and appeared to be the detailed records of a year-long seminar given long ago by Chinese experts to Pakistanis on how to build the warhead, the experts said.
Even before Kadafi made his announcement, U.S. officials had confronted Musharraf with the Libyan evidence against Khan, leaving the Pakistani leader with little choice but to act.
But Khan remained too popular — and Musharraf's grip on power too tenuous — for a public arrest. Instead, Khan was placed under house arrest and made a brief televised confession on Feb. 4, 2004, and he was pardoned immediately.
Since then, Pakistan has kept Khan outside the reach of investigators, leaving many questions about the proliferation network unanswered.
In one troubling discovery, investigators and customs officials in Europe say they recently found signs that elements of the network had resumed work. This time, the client again is Pakistan, which investigators suspect is trying to get material for a new generation of centrifuges.
"With Pakistan today, it's hard to know how much they need, but already a couple of items have been stopped very recently, including a shipment of high-strength aluminum for centrifuges," an investigator said.
In the meantime, Congress has approved and funded a request for a three-year, $3-billion package of economic and military assistance to Pakistan, which remains a key ally in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
Note from the above:
What a punch line to this story, eh!Libyan officials later would tell the Americans and British that Khan had delivered the warhead plans to them in late 2001 or early 2002. (I.E., AFTER 9-11)
The two nuclear weapons specialists who examined the top-secret plans said the Libyans had handed them over in two plastic shopping bags. They said identifying marks had been removed but the designs were clearly for a warhead tested by China in 1966 and later provided to Pakistan.
One bag contained about 100 production drawings for fabricating the warhead; the other held hundreds of pages of handwritten notes and unclassified documents from sources such as the U.S. Department of Energy.
The notes, written in English by at least four people, were numbered sequentially and appeared to be the detailed records of a year-long seminar given long ago by Chinese experts to Pakistanis on how to build the warhead, the experts said.
...
Since then, Pakistan has kept Khan outside the reach of investigators, leaving many questions about the proliferation network unanswered.
In one troubling discovery, investigators and customs officials in Europe say they recently found signs that elements of the network had resumed work. This time, the client again is Pakistan, which investigators suspect is trying to get material for a new generation of centrifuges.
"With Pakistan today, it's hard to know how much they need, but already a couple of items have been stopped very recently, including a shipment of high-strength aluminum for centrifuges," an investigator said. In the meantime, Congress has approved and funded a request for a three-year, $3-billion package of economic and military assistance to Pakistan, which remains a key ally in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!)
From the latest India Abroad weekly.
The A. Q. Khan Factor
By Harold A. Gould
India Abroad: February 25. 2005
A quiescence has settled over South Asian diplomacy since the Bush
administration returned to power. Commentaries have been written and
statements have been made on whither and how relations between India and the US will develop over the ensuing months and years. But lately these have elicited very little public discussion. It is virtually the same
with regard to India-Pakistan relations.
In great measure this undoubtedly has to do with the prominence of
events in the Middle East: The recent elections in Iraq, and the
fusillade of car bombings both leading up to and following them by
disgruntled Sunnis and Al Qaeda jihadis, the passing of Yasir Arafat and
what looks like some semblance of a renewed peace process between
Israelis and Palestinians in its wake, the assassination of former Prime
Minister, Rafik Hariri, in Lebanon, all have diverted attention
elsewhere for the time being.
Even the drama and the tragedy of the Tsunami have receded into the
background.
The question arises as to whether there remains anything to talk about
vis a vis South Asia.
Does quiescence imply tranquility?
Hardly. There remain perplexing issues which down the road have the
potential to rival the events currently grabbing the headlines elsewhere.
Time (February 14th) did a cover story on A. Q. Khan, the father of
Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, which was aptly entitled, Merchant of Menace.
It relates the now-widely known and sordid tale of how this enigmatic
gentleman created a supermarket of nuclear goodies for sale to any rogue
regime, under the noses of his allegedly clueless political bosses in
Islamabad. Apart from the millions of dollars which poured into his
private coffers, and those of his cohorts (who certainly include members
of Pakistan’s military junta, their denials to the contrary
notwithstanding), is the damage his cupidity and purported Islamist
fanaticism did to the chances for peace and security not only in South
Asia but the world.
Among the many disturbing implications of the Khan affair is how the
United States dealt with it, or should we say failed to deal with it.
By timidly acquiescing in General/President Musharraf’s disingenuous
white-washing of Khan’s treachery, claiming that the Pakistani dictator
was essential to the war on Al Qaeda, the Bush administration made a
mockery of their claim to the moral high ground in their declared quest
to confer freedom and democracy upon every nation within the reach of
American power.
President Bush by default actually has made Pakistan a greater danger to
the South Asian region and even beyond than it has ever been.
This is not merely because his failure to act decisively allowed
Musharraf to let A. Q. Khan personally off the hook. It is because no
measures were taken to make continued US support of Pakistan dependent
on their initiating the kinds of changes in the country’s domestic
political environment that would prevent the reoccurrence of persons
like A. Q. Khan and all that he represents.
It includes the Pakistani dictator’s failure so far to honor his pledges
to democratize his country, to dismantle the infrastructure of deceit
and corruption which nourishes Pakistan’s patronage-ridden,
military-dominated industrial complex, and to create a modern, secular
educational system to replace the madrassas that are currently the
principal recruiting ground of some religious parties at home and Al
Qaeda abroad.
The fact that these measures have never exceeded token levels of
implementation is why Pakistani society remains vulnerable to political
breakdown which, if it occurs, might well tilt the balance of power
toward the fundamentalist forces lurking in the political wings.
Should this prove to be the case, A. Q. Khan’s dream would come true:
The “Islamic bomb’ will become a reality. The formidable quantities of
American arms ( including F-16s?) Dispatched to Pakistan under the aegis
of its recently established status as a Non-NATO Ally will become an
arsenal of the most up-to-date weaponry, pointed both at democratic
India and democratically evolving Afghanistan. In the end, ironically,
such an eventuality would threaten America herself.
If you doubt the latter, then ponder the words of General Hamid Gul,
“the notorious former head of Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI)” who
is currently “strategic advisor” to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal , and
embodies the political outlook of this group of six fundamentalist
parties that would be a major player in any radical Islamist government
assuming power should the Musharraf regime collapse.
In a statement appearing on the front page of the Urdu daily newspaper,
Nawa-e-Waqt, General Gul declared that the “leadership vacuum created by
the sad demise of President Arafat can only be filled by Osama bin Laden
and Mullah Omar, the real leaders that are the only dedicated
individuals with the mass support of the Muslim world.” (The source for
these quotations is Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-at-large of the
Washington Times.)
For reasons like this, there are thoughtful people in high places in the
United States who seriously question the wisdom of pursuing the
old-fashioned, Cold War emphasis on military assistance as the best
means of assuring the kind of stable Pakistan that will best serve
American strategic interests in the region.
Says Congressman Gary Ackerman, co-chair of the India caucus, concerning
the A. Q. Khan affair, “How do we turn over material and things to the
Pakistanis that have to do with America’s security interests, when
Pakistan has demonstrated it does not even have control over its atomic
program...?” (India Abroad interview, January 28.)
For two generations, the United States has pursued a grand strategy
inherited from the British in the dying days of the Empire, which
envisioned the newly created Pakistan (1946) as the fulcrum of a Western
security structure which simultaneously anchored the Middleastern right
flank and the South Asian left flank. The policy was a failure as the
State upon which the US placed its bets was a political house of cards
and an economic basket case.
It relied on the ability of a coterie of generals and feudal landlords
who had no legitimacy among the masses to build and maintain a military
machine out of all proportion to the country’s capacity to sustain it.
Political control could be maintained only by thwarting the development
of popular government and promoting a permanent state of war against its
neighbor, India.
Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose secretary of state was the
policy’s architect, quickly saw through its futility within two years of
its inception.
“It was a terrible error,” he declared, in a National Security Council
meeting, “but now we seem hopelessly involved in it.” He concluded that
“our tendency to rush out and seek allies was not very sensible.”
Regional war, economic retardation and the rise of Soviet and Chinese
Communist influence in South Asia, the very things the policy was
designed to prevent, were the ineluctable consequences of shallow
strategic thinking.
As nothing really changed in terms of fundamentals, the conditions which
led to Khan and to a Pakistan teetering on the brink of becoming a
jahadist state with nuclear warheads, are only a step removed from
realization.
America’s johnny-come-lately turn toward rapprochement and strategic
cooperation with democratic India – the country that was always
America’s best hope for achieving a secure and stable South Asia – is at
least a sensible approach to undoing a policy gone wrong. The problem
remains that the forces and interests that produced the Cold War still
have not entirely been put to rest.
The US still finds itself unable get its strategic head on straight; to
take the decisive actions which would forcefully compel Musharraf to do
the one thing that would give Pakistan and the region the best chance to
avoid the political holocaust – allow the country’s democratic
constitution to function and give scope to Pakistan’s beleaguered
middle-classes to erect structural roadblocks against the further
advance of jihadism.
K. Subrahmanyam (India Abroad, Jan. 28) has admirably characterized
America’s split-personality. Condoleeza Rice, he declares, “has admitted
in her confirmation hearings that the US is worried about Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands... But what puzzles us, is
why Americans don’t take it further” and do something tangible about it.
As Robert Scheer puts it: despite “the exposure of the Khan black market
ring, nothing has changed... Bush [recently] honored Musharraf – who
since seizing power has purged his country’s Supreme Court and rewritten
its constitution – as a ‘courageous leader’.”(Los Angeles Times ,
December 7) The chances for effective action are fast eroding.
[Harold Gould is Visiting Scholar in the Center for South Asian Studies
at the University of Virginia.]
And the Pakis, as always, deny.
Pakistan rejects its connection with Iran nuclear program
"Why, everybody from George to Colin to Tony to Jack are saying in unison that we were MuNNA Good, and that good MuNNAs never do no bad. Therefore, this latest from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times is garbage, by definition, under the US MuNNA Act."
Pakistan rejects its connection with Iran nuclear program
Heh heh. Good by the Pakis. That they are beating the Foggies on the head with the same boxes full of cakes and candies that the Foggies lavished on them in the first place."The report is unfounded and has no evidence to prove," ForeignOffice spokesman said in a statement, the state-run Pakistan television reported.
He said that Pakistan's investigations into the alleged transfer of nuclear technology are completely satisfactory and that the world community has also recognized the fact.
"Why, everybody from George to Colin to Tony to Jack are saying in unison that we were MuNNA Good, and that good MuNNAs never do no bad. Therefore, this latest from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times is garbage, by definition, under the US MuNNA Act."
After the Washington Post and the LA Times yesterday, it is the turn of NY Times to join the party today:
Pressed, Iran Admits It Discussed Acquiring Nuclear Technology
Pressed, Iran Admits It Discussed Acquiring Nuclear Technology
(...as we know, the good World is screwed by)...the network run by Pakistan's top nuclear expert, A. Q. Khan.
While Iran is believed to have taken up only parts of the deal offered by the Khan network, its scope appears to resemble the package deal that the network ultimately sold to Libya a decade later. Libya also received the blueprints for a Chinese-designed nuclear weapon; it is unclear whether Iran was offered the same plans.
One of the most striking information printed by LAT is that Pakis have Nuclear weapon design of chinese origin of 60's vintage. They have done nothing by themselves. If their design is so obsolete then theoratically their yield can be surmised in the range of 10-20kt. I guess it gives a new meaning to Mushy's claim, "Our Nuclear Weapons Program is more advanced than India". Hmmmmm
Karan, This is old news. It was always rumored in all the non-prolif sites that the TSP weapon is based on the dual delivery capable weapon that was the fourth one tested by PRC. By releasing this info the impression given is that its old stuff. If so why were the Pakis being arrested in the 1980s for trying to procure klystrons etc from US? If the design is Chinese why the Paki quest for US hardware? Also if the weapon is fully tested by PRC why the Chagai tests in 1998?
Something is not right in theTSP/ AQK proliferation story.
Something is not right in theTSP/ AQK proliferation story.
ramana garu said
There is that much evidence in recent Time magazine and in the book inconvenient spy.
It si also known to unkil that that small patakas of TSP is no match to India and India is closing the gap between PRC and itself wrt door to door delivery
The fact is that unkil knew AQ Khan & Co were conduits for US technology to reach PRC in bits and peices.Something is not right in theTSP/ AQK proliferation story.
There is that much evidence in recent Time magazine and in the book inconvenient spy.
It si also known to unkil that that small patakas of TSP is no match to India and India is closing the gap between PRC and itself wrt door to door delivery
Article by David Albright and Corey Hinderstein (of the Institute for Science and International Security) in the latest Washington Quarterly:
Unraveling the A. Q. Khan and Future Proliferation
Networks
http://www.twq.com/05spring/docs/05spring_albright.pdf
http://www.twq.com/currentissue/index.cfm
Unraveling the A. Q. Khan and Future Proliferation
Networks
http://www.twq.com/05spring/docs/05spring_albright.pdf
http://www.twq.com/currentissue/index.cfm
SpaceDaily: Khan Network Can Regroup, Warns Report
by Anwar IqbaL
UPI South Asian Affairs Analyst
Washington (UPI) Mar 02, 2005
The network that supplied nuclear technology to rogue states can regroup and resume its activities, warns a report by a Washington-based anti-proliferation organization.
The report by the Institute for Science and International Security explores the truly international character of this network and warns, "There is little confidence that other networks do not or will not exist or that elements of the Khan network will not reconstitute themselves in the future."
The joint study by the institute's president, David Albright, and its deputy director, Corey Hinderstein, describes the Khan network as "first and foremost, an elaborate and highly successful illicit procurement network."
The network was headed by Pakistan's chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who in a televised confession in February last year admitted supplying nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
U.S. and other intelligence agencies had known about the activities of this gang for sometime but the Bush administration confronted Pakistan in early 2004 after collecting solid evidence of Khan's involvement in nuclear smuggling.
Khan is considered a national hero in Pakistan for enabling his country to test its nuclear devices in May 1998, less than a month after similar tests by archrival India.
Talking to reporters in December 2004, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell recalled how he conveyed the message to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf: "We know so much about this that we're going to go public with it, and within a few weeks, okay? And you needed to deal with this before you have to deal with it publicly." According to Powell, "(T)he next thing we knew, A.Q. Khan had been put in custody."
The ISIS report, published in spring 2005 edition of the Washington Quarterly, says that Khan created this network in the 1970s to supply Pakistan's gas-centrifuge program, which has been used to produce weapons-grade uranium for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
According to this report, Khan and his associates slowly expanded their import operation into "a transnational illegal network" that also exported gas centrifuges and production capabilities as well as designs for nuclear weapons to mostly Muslim countries to turn a profit and provide additional business for their international collaborators.
"In addition to money, Khan was also motivated by pan-Islamism and hostility to Western controls on nuclear technology," the report says quoting several articles Khan wrote for technical journals in the late 1980s.
By 2003, when the network was exposed to the public, it had become a truly trans-national organization. Although the key providers of the necessary technology and several of the network's leaders, including Khan, were located in Pakistan, other leaders were spread throughout the world, including in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, South Africa and Malaysia, the report points out.
The network also depended on unwitting manufacturing companies and suppliers in many countries. It sold what the Pakistanis have called the P1 and P2 centrifuges - the first two centrifuges that Pakistan deployed in large numbers.
The P1 centrifuge uses an aluminum rotor, and the P2 centrifuge uses a maraging steel rotor, which is stronger, spins faster, and therefore enriches more uranium per machine than the P1 centrifuge's aluminum rotor.
Initial exports of the P1 centrifuges to Iran in the mid-1990s included 500 machines retired from Pakistan's nuclear program or made under contract by the network, says the report. This quantity of P1 centrifuges would only be able to produce about one quarter of a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium in a year.
In the Libyan case, the network focused on producing P2 components outside of Pakistan. The Libyans have informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that they placed an order for 10,000 P2 machines.
Because each centrifuge has roughly 100 different components, this order translated into a total of about 1 million components - "a staggering number of parts given the sophistication of gas-centrifuge components."
"Thus, it is clear that Khan's network was assembling an impressive cast of technical experts, companies, suppliers, and workshops. The workshops contracted to manufacture components for the network typically imported the necessary items, such as metals, equipment or subcomponents."
After the facilities produced the item, they would send it to Dubai with a false end-user certificate, where it would be repackaged and sent to Libya.
Initial information found in Libya identified roughly a half-dozen key workshops spread across at least Africa, Asia and the Middle East that were making the centrifuge components.
The network selected a workshop based on the type of centrifuge component needed and the materials and equipment involved in making those particular components.
The most publicly known facility - Scomi Precision Engineering, or SCOPE, in Malaysia - made stationary aluminum components and was the source of 15 percent of the total number of components destined for Libya.
In October 2003, the dramatic seizure of uranium-enrichment gas-centrifuge components bound for Libya's secret nuclear weapons program was made aboard the German-owned ship BBC China. As the ship passed through the Suez Canal, it was stopped by German and Italian authorities.
Workshops in Turkey importing subcomponents from Europe and elsewhere assembled other key parts of the centrifuges, including centrifuge motors, power supplies and ring magnets.
Tradefin Engineering, a company in South Africa, produced the elaborate equipment needed to insert and withdraw the uranium hexafluoride gas that is enriched in centrifuges. Tradefin also attempted unsuccessfully to make the sensitive maraging steel rotors for the P2 centrifuges.
Libya also ordered from the network a sophisticated manufacturing center, code-named Workshop 1001, to produce centrifuge components.
The original plan called for this center to make additional centrifuges either to replace broken ones or add to the total number after the network delivered the first 10,000 machines, but if the network encountered problems in making a component for the original 10,000 machines, Libya's manufacturing center may have had to accomplish that task as well.
Most of the equipment for the center came from Europe, particularly from or through Spain and Italy, and was sent to Libya via Dubai. The network had also supplied detailed manufacturing information for many of the parts.
by Anwar IqbaL
UPI South Asian Affairs Analyst
Washington (UPI) Mar 02, 2005
The network that supplied nuclear technology to rogue states can regroup and resume its activities, warns a report by a Washington-based anti-proliferation organization.
The report by the Institute for Science and International Security explores the truly international character of this network and warns, "There is little confidence that other networks do not or will not exist or that elements of the Khan network will not reconstitute themselves in the future."
The joint study by the institute's president, David Albright, and its deputy director, Corey Hinderstein, describes the Khan network as "first and foremost, an elaborate and highly successful illicit procurement network."
The network was headed by Pakistan's chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who in a televised confession in February last year admitted supplying nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
U.S. and other intelligence agencies had known about the activities of this gang for sometime but the Bush administration confronted Pakistan in early 2004 after collecting solid evidence of Khan's involvement in nuclear smuggling.
Khan is considered a national hero in Pakistan for enabling his country to test its nuclear devices in May 1998, less than a month after similar tests by archrival India.
Talking to reporters in December 2004, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell recalled how he conveyed the message to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf: "We know so much about this that we're going to go public with it, and within a few weeks, okay? And you needed to deal with this before you have to deal with it publicly." According to Powell, "(T)he next thing we knew, A.Q. Khan had been put in custody."
The ISIS report, published in spring 2005 edition of the Washington Quarterly, says that Khan created this network in the 1970s to supply Pakistan's gas-centrifuge program, which has been used to produce weapons-grade uranium for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
According to this report, Khan and his associates slowly expanded their import operation into "a transnational illegal network" that also exported gas centrifuges and production capabilities as well as designs for nuclear weapons to mostly Muslim countries to turn a profit and provide additional business for their international collaborators.
"In addition to money, Khan was also motivated by pan-Islamism and hostility to Western controls on nuclear technology," the report says quoting several articles Khan wrote for technical journals in the late 1980s.
By 2003, when the network was exposed to the public, it had become a truly trans-national organization. Although the key providers of the necessary technology and several of the network's leaders, including Khan, were located in Pakistan, other leaders were spread throughout the world, including in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, South Africa and Malaysia, the report points out.
The network also depended on unwitting manufacturing companies and suppliers in many countries. It sold what the Pakistanis have called the P1 and P2 centrifuges - the first two centrifuges that Pakistan deployed in large numbers.
The P1 centrifuge uses an aluminum rotor, and the P2 centrifuge uses a maraging steel rotor, which is stronger, spins faster, and therefore enriches more uranium per machine than the P1 centrifuge's aluminum rotor.
Initial exports of the P1 centrifuges to Iran in the mid-1990s included 500 machines retired from Pakistan's nuclear program or made under contract by the network, says the report. This quantity of P1 centrifuges would only be able to produce about one quarter of a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium in a year.
In the Libyan case, the network focused on producing P2 components outside of Pakistan. The Libyans have informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that they placed an order for 10,000 P2 machines.
Because each centrifuge has roughly 100 different components, this order translated into a total of about 1 million components - "a staggering number of parts given the sophistication of gas-centrifuge components."
"Thus, it is clear that Khan's network was assembling an impressive cast of technical experts, companies, suppliers, and workshops. The workshops contracted to manufacture components for the network typically imported the necessary items, such as metals, equipment or subcomponents."
After the facilities produced the item, they would send it to Dubai with a false end-user certificate, where it would be repackaged and sent to Libya.
Initial information found in Libya identified roughly a half-dozen key workshops spread across at least Africa, Asia and the Middle East that were making the centrifuge components.
The network selected a workshop based on the type of centrifuge component needed and the materials and equipment involved in making those particular components.
The most publicly known facility - Scomi Precision Engineering, or SCOPE, in Malaysia - made stationary aluminum components and was the source of 15 percent of the total number of components destined for Libya.
In October 2003, the dramatic seizure of uranium-enrichment gas-centrifuge components bound for Libya's secret nuclear weapons program was made aboard the German-owned ship BBC China. As the ship passed through the Suez Canal, it was stopped by German and Italian authorities.
Workshops in Turkey importing subcomponents from Europe and elsewhere assembled other key parts of the centrifuges, including centrifuge motors, power supplies and ring magnets.
Tradefin Engineering, a company in South Africa, produced the elaborate equipment needed to insert and withdraw the uranium hexafluoride gas that is enriched in centrifuges. Tradefin also attempted unsuccessfully to make the sensitive maraging steel rotors for the P2 centrifuges.
Libya also ordered from the network a sophisticated manufacturing center, code-named Workshop 1001, to produce centrifuge components.
The original plan called for this center to make additional centrifuges either to replace broken ones or add to the total number after the network delivered the first 10,000 machines, but if the network encountered problems in making a component for the original 10,000 machines, Libya's manufacturing center may have had to accomplish that task as well.
Most of the equipment for the center came from Europe, particularly from or through Spain and Italy, and was sent to Libya via Dubai. The network had also supplied detailed manufacturing information for many of the parts.
HOT HOT HOT....The TSP ambassador to the US was involved in nuclear proliferation to
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Generals used Khan for Pakistan’s nukes, says US report
WASHINGTON: A disarmament group has claimed that Pakistan used the Khan network for 25 years to “obtain technology, components, and materials for its own nuclear weapons.”
The Arms Control Association (ACA), a Washington-based group formed in 1971 to promote arms control, in an article by Leonard Weiss in its March newsletter to members states that though Dr Khan’s activities had been tracked by US intelligence for “more than two decades, little attempt had been made to roll up the network he created. Rather than focusing on this profound long-term strategic danger to national security, the United States had chosen to pursue short-term, tactical foreign policy gains with Pakistan.”
But according to a briefing given to Pakistani journalists on February 1, 2004, by Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, commander of Pakistan’s Strategic Planning and Development Cell, Dr Khan signed a 12-page confession in which he admitted to providing Iran, Libya, and North Korea with technical assistance and components for making high-speed centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium.
In addition, according to three of the 20 Pakistani journalists who attended the briefing, Khan was defending himself by saying that he was pressured to sell nuclear technologies by two (now deceased) individuals associated with Bhutto, that nuclear assistance to Iran was approved by then army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg, and that the deal with North Korea was reportedly supported by two former army chiefs, one of whom now Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.
Describing it as a “misguided policy approach”, the writer charges that the Bush administration has chosen to subordinate nonproliferation goals, including fully breaking apart the Khan network, to the short-term goal of building a relationship with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Nor has Bush proposed a long-term strategy to prevent a similar network from taking birth in the future.
Tracing the history of US-Pakistan relations, Weiss notes that the US turned a blind eye during the Afghan war to Pakistan’s nuclear programme that allowed Dr Khan to “obtain all the technology, materials, and equipment needed to build nuclear weapons.” He writes that the National Security Agency (NSA) was “routinely intercepting faxes and telexes from high-tech firms in Germany and Switzerland looking for a Pakistani nuclear connection and they were aware of assistance coming from firms in Turkey.
Indeed, dozens of démarches were issued to the Turkish government during the late 1970s and 1980s protesting ongoing shipments of electrical components - many of them made in the United States - to Pakistan. Turkey claimed that its export laws were insufficient to allow the government to interfere with such trade. After some time, Turkey passed a stronger export control law, but its enforcement was feeble. Additionally, the US government refused to acknowledge the Turkish role officially because doing so would have required the cutoff of military assistance to an important NATO ally.”
According to Weiss, the Reagan and Bush administrations “did all they could to keep Congress in the dark about the details of the Pakistani programme.” Richard Kerr, a senior CIA official, has said that Pakistan had the bomb by 1987, something that Benazir Bhutto confirmed in an interview to the Voice of America this week. When she visited the United States in 1989, she was told that the determination of “no possession” made that year would be the last one. “Yet, there is little evidence that any of Khan’s suppliers were shut down at the time. Khan realized that he could use the network he had created, now also including Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure, to enable other countries with nuclear ambitions to obtain critical components and materials for their own weapon programmes, with Pakistan (and Khan) reaping large rewards in the process.”
Iranian nuclear scientists began to receive training in Pakistan beginning in 1988. Assistance was also provided to Iran’s centrifugue programme in 1989. The Khan laboratory began publishing brochures, distributed at arms fairs, advertising equipment for sale that was useful in the construction and operation of centrifuges, including vacuum devices to enable rotors to spin in relatively frictionless chambers. “The Khan laboratory was not the only one, however, touting sales and delivery of equipment useful for nuclear-enrichment purposes. In 1999, following its nuclear-weapon tests the previous year, the Pakistani government put out its own advertisement of procedures for the export of nuclear equipment and components. The ad also listed equipment for sale, including ‘gas centrifuges and magnet baffles for the separation of uranium isotopes.’ ”
Weiss states that the ads had the desired effect and other countries began viewing Pakistan as a source for building nuclear weapons. Khan was contacted and began selling off surplus centrifuges and components. Shipments were sometimes made using official government cargo planes to middlemen in other countries, who were used to disguise the origin of the cargo.
Khan later arranged for parts to be ordered through his middlemen and to be delivered directly from his network sources. The spectrum of supplies that could be provided by the network included older and advanced centrifuges, bomb design (based on the original Chinese design given to Pakistan in 1983), electronic components, and advanced materials. The network also provided logistical and technical assistance.
The sales, claims the article, were not only producing funds for support of Dr Khan’s laboratory; they were also helping Pakistan in its development of missile capability, a programme that was run out of the Khan laboratory as well. For years, North Korea had been selling missiles to Pakistan. Pakistan had been paying cash for the missiles but ran into a foreign currency reserves crunch around 1996. At that point, it is believed, the North Koreans agreed to a barter transaction involving the provision of centrifuges in exchange for missiles. Iran is believed to have been the first customer of Pakistan/Khan nuclear sales. khalid hasan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.as ... 005_pg7_56
E-Mail this article to a friendPrinter Friendly Version
Generals used Khan for Pakistan’s nukes, says US report
WASHINGTON: A disarmament group has claimed that Pakistan used the Khan network for 25 years to “obtain technology, components, and materials for its own nuclear weapons.”
The Arms Control Association (ACA), a Washington-based group formed in 1971 to promote arms control, in an article by Leonard Weiss in its March newsletter to members states that though Dr Khan’s activities had been tracked by US intelligence for “more than two decades, little attempt had been made to roll up the network he created. Rather than focusing on this profound long-term strategic danger to national security, the United States had chosen to pursue short-term, tactical foreign policy gains with Pakistan.”
But according to a briefing given to Pakistani journalists on February 1, 2004, by Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, commander of Pakistan’s Strategic Planning and Development Cell, Dr Khan signed a 12-page confession in which he admitted to providing Iran, Libya, and North Korea with technical assistance and components for making high-speed centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium.
In addition, according to three of the 20 Pakistani journalists who attended the briefing, Khan was defending himself by saying that he was pressured to sell nuclear technologies by two (now deceased) individuals associated with Bhutto, that nuclear assistance to Iran was approved by then army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg, and that the deal with North Korea was reportedly supported by two former army chiefs, one of whom now Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.
Describing it as a “misguided policy approach”, the writer charges that the Bush administration has chosen to subordinate nonproliferation goals, including fully breaking apart the Khan network, to the short-term goal of building a relationship with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Nor has Bush proposed a long-term strategy to prevent a similar network from taking birth in the future.
Tracing the history of US-Pakistan relations, Weiss notes that the US turned a blind eye during the Afghan war to Pakistan’s nuclear programme that allowed Dr Khan to “obtain all the technology, materials, and equipment needed to build nuclear weapons.” He writes that the National Security Agency (NSA) was “routinely intercepting faxes and telexes from high-tech firms in Germany and Switzerland looking for a Pakistani nuclear connection and they were aware of assistance coming from firms in Turkey.
Indeed, dozens of démarches were issued to the Turkish government during the late 1970s and 1980s protesting ongoing shipments of electrical components - many of them made in the United States - to Pakistan. Turkey claimed that its export laws were insufficient to allow the government to interfere with such trade. After some time, Turkey passed a stronger export control law, but its enforcement was feeble. Additionally, the US government refused to acknowledge the Turkish role officially because doing so would have required the cutoff of military assistance to an important NATO ally.”
According to Weiss, the Reagan and Bush administrations “did all they could to keep Congress in the dark about the details of the Pakistani programme.” Richard Kerr, a senior CIA official, has said that Pakistan had the bomb by 1987, something that Benazir Bhutto confirmed in an interview to the Voice of America this week. When she visited the United States in 1989, she was told that the determination of “no possession” made that year would be the last one. “Yet, there is little evidence that any of Khan’s suppliers were shut down at the time. Khan realized that he could use the network he had created, now also including Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure, to enable other countries with nuclear ambitions to obtain critical components and materials for their own weapon programmes, with Pakistan (and Khan) reaping large rewards in the process.”
Iranian nuclear scientists began to receive training in Pakistan beginning in 1988. Assistance was also provided to Iran’s centrifugue programme in 1989. The Khan laboratory began publishing brochures, distributed at arms fairs, advertising equipment for sale that was useful in the construction and operation of centrifuges, including vacuum devices to enable rotors to spin in relatively frictionless chambers. “The Khan laboratory was not the only one, however, touting sales and delivery of equipment useful for nuclear-enrichment purposes. In 1999, following its nuclear-weapon tests the previous year, the Pakistani government put out its own advertisement of procedures for the export of nuclear equipment and components. The ad also listed equipment for sale, including ‘gas centrifuges and magnet baffles for the separation of uranium isotopes.’ ”
Weiss states that the ads had the desired effect and other countries began viewing Pakistan as a source for building nuclear weapons. Khan was contacted and began selling off surplus centrifuges and components. Shipments were sometimes made using official government cargo planes to middlemen in other countries, who were used to disguise the origin of the cargo.
Khan later arranged for parts to be ordered through his middlemen and to be delivered directly from his network sources. The spectrum of supplies that could be provided by the network included older and advanced centrifuges, bomb design (based on the original Chinese design given to Pakistan in 1983), electronic components, and advanced materials. The network also provided logistical and technical assistance.
The sales, claims the article, were not only producing funds for support of Dr Khan’s laboratory; they were also helping Pakistan in its development of missile capability, a programme that was run out of the Khan laboratory as well. For years, North Korea had been selling missiles to Pakistan. Pakistan had been paying cash for the missiles but ran into a foreign currency reserves crunch around 1996. At that point, it is believed, the North Koreans agreed to a barter transaction involving the provision of centrifuges in exchange for missiles. Iran is believed to have been the first customer of Pakistan/Khan nuclear sales. khalid hasan
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http://in.news.yahoo.com/050305/139/2jzs4.html
Pak behind Khan's nuke Walmart: Benazir
Islamabad, Mar 5 (ANI): Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has said that she found it hard to believe that Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr AQ Khan ran the nuclear proliferation single-handedly.
According to The News, Benazir in an interview to VOA said that since it was a large network involving so many people, it was not possible for Khan to proliferate nuke technology without government permission.
"I find it very hard to believe it. How a man who could not leave the country without government permission could do it," the paper quoted her as saying.
She further said that the government was totally aware of Dr Khan's activities.
Dr A Q Khan, regarded as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and revered across the country as a national hero soon became disgraced after revelations that he had sold nuclear technology to third countries like Libya, Iran and North Korea. He was eventually put under house arrest in 2004 on the orders of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
Despite consistent efforts by the international community to allow IAEA and US officials access to Khan for knowing the exact level of proliferation, Pakistan has from the very beginning refused to provide access to Khan, on the grounds that Pakistan's own intelligence is investigating the matter and Pakistan has put an end into the nuclear black-marketing by Khan. (ANI)
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Well well well, what is going on here? So much for power sharing looks like its good old "if I cant have it then no one can" effect. Mushy is going to be really be downing the whiskey tonite.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/050305/139/2jzs4.html
Pak behind Khan's nuke Walmart: Benazir
Islamabad, Mar 5 (ANI): Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has said that she found it hard to believe that Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr AQ Khan ran the nuclear proliferation single-handedly.
According to The News, Benazir in an interview to VOA said that since it was a large network involving so many people, it was not possible for Khan to proliferate nuke technology without government permission.
"I find it very hard to believe it. How a man who could not leave the country without government permission could do it," the paper quoted her as saying.
She further said that the government was totally aware of Dr Khan's activities.
Dr A Q Khan, regarded as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and revered across the country as a national hero soon became disgraced after revelations that he had sold nuclear technology to third countries like Libya, Iran and North Korea. He was eventually put under house arrest in 2004 on the orders of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
Despite consistent efforts by the international community to allow IAEA and US officials access to Khan for knowing the exact level of proliferation, Pakistan has from the very beginning refused to provide access to Khan, on the grounds that Pakistan's own intelligence is investigating the matter and Pakistan has put an end into the nuclear black-marketing by Khan. (ANI)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well well well, what is going on here? So much for power sharing looks like its good old "if I cant have it then no one can" effect. Mushy is going to be really be downing the whiskey tonite.
V,
I read the piece that the above report was based on. See:
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_03/Weiss.asp
I read the piece that the above report was based on. See:
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_03/Weiss.asp
Turning a Blind Eye Again?
The Khan Network's History and Lessons for U.S. Policy
Leonard Weiss
Alittle more than one year ago, the world learned that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had provided nuclear-weapons-related technology to a number of countries, including North Korea, Iran, and Libya. Yet, the revelations could hardly have come as a surprise: the supply network was used by Pakistan over the past 25 years to obtain technology, components, and materials for its own nuclear weapons.
Far more remarkable was that, although Khan’s activities had been tracked by U.S. intelligence for more than two decades, little attempt had been made to roll up the network he created. Rather than focusing on this profound long-term strategic danger to national security, the United States had chosen to pursue short-term, tactical foreign policy gains with Pakistan.
This misguided policy approach continues today as the Bush administration has chosen to subordinate nonproliferation goals, including fully breaking apart the Khan network, to the short-term goal of building a relationship with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The president has also not proposed a long-term strategy to prevent a similar network from popping up in the future.
A Checkered History
The U.S.-Pakistani relationship has a checkered history: U.S. interests for most of Pakistan’s history have been driven by Cold War considerations, while Pakistan’s interests have been driven by fear of India and the fate of the contested province of Kashmir.
For the United States, Pakistan’s strategic geographical position in South Asia was an obstacle to Soviet access to the Arabian Sea and Moscow’s political designs in the Middle East generally. India, on the other hand, was more sympathetic to Moscow as India’s ruling party was ideologically oriented toward a socialist model of economic development. In 1954, the United States and Pakistan signed a mutual defense agreement. A year later, Pakistan acceded to the U.S.-backed South East Asia Treaty Organization as well as the Central Treaty Organization, formerly known as the Baghdad Pact. In 1959, a U.S.-Pakistani military cooperation agreement took effect.
By 1959, the Pakistani government had effectively ceded remote areas of its northern provinces to the CIA and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) for the collection of intelligence on Soviet activities. From these facilities, the United States eavesdropped on Soviet nuclear facilities in Kazakhstan.[1] Secret bases in the Peshawar area were used for U-2 flights over the Soviet Union.[2] Despite this, U.S. relations with Pakistan were not stable. During and immediately after the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistani wars, the United States suspended military assistance to both sides, causing a cooling of the Pakistani-U.S. relationship.
Meanwhile, the USSR-China split and the Sino-Indo border war of 1962 created conditions for China and Pakistan to pursue a closer relationship, which flourished despite U.S. concerns. The relationship deepened as China provided assistance to Pakistan during the U.S. military embargo.[3]
U.S. assistance to Pakistan was restored in 1975 but was cut off again in 1979 when Pakistan imported nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technology following enactment of the Symington[4] and Glenn[5] amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act.
This cutoff did not last long. The mujahideen, a group of Islamic warriors, or jihadists, had taken up arms in revolt against the Soviet-backed Afghanistan government that was attempting to bring some secularization to Afghan society (via, e.g., a literacy campaign for girls, the banning of dowries for brides, and legislated freedom of choice in marriage). The United States saw this as an opportunity to destabilize the Communist government by covertly assisting the mujahideen through the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI). The presidential “finding” approving the covert program was signed in July 1979, and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December, rendering prescient a prediction made in writing by then-national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Jimmy Carter that the Soviets would react in this way to the U.S. aid.[6] Once the invasion began, Brzezinski sent Carter another message on December 26, 1979, saying, “This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.”[7]
In addition to undercutting a key U.S. nonproliferation pillar, the assistance to the mujahideen also boosted Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, including the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda. It was not the last time that an overemphasis on short-term, tactical foreign policy considerations would lead to long-term damage to U.S. national security.
Still, in the context of the Cold War, Carter’s policy was backed by much of the foreign policy establishment, including by President Ronald Reagan when he took office in 1981. The Reagan administration pushed through a $3.2 billion economic and military assistance package for Pakistan with a legislated six-year waiver of the sanctions against Pakistan for its nuclear violations. Such waivers were extended, and assistance for the mujahideen via Pakistan continued until the Soviets began to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1988.
The Origins of the Khan Network
During all of that time, the policy of assistance to the mujahideen was accompanied by a consciously adopted “blind eye” to the Pakistani nuclear program that allowed Khan to obtain all the technology, materials, and equipment needed to build nuclear weapons. In 1984, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Dean Hinton wrote in a classified evaluation letter on the work of CIA station chief Howard Hart, “Collection efforts on the Pakistani effort to develop nuclear weapons is amazingly resourceful and disturbing. I would sleep better if he and his people did not find out so much about what is really going on in secret and contrary to President Zia’s assurances to us.”[8]
The passage of laws in 1985 designed to sanction Pakistan if it was found either to possess the bomb (the Pressler amendment)[9] or attempt to export nuclear-weapon-related materials or equipment from the United States illegally (the Solarz amendment)[10] were rendered ineffective.[11]
To build his bomb, Khan initially stole centrifuge designs and a list of about 100 suppliers of centrifuge parts and materials from the URENCO uranium-enrichment facility in the Netherlands. From Pakistan, he began his shopping spree. He received materials from Africa and components and advanced machinery from Europe, with shipments and payments directed through the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The trade involved firms or agents in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, Switzerland, and Turkey, among others. “They literally begged us to buy their equipment,” Khan said in a 2001 publication celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Kahuta laboratory that now bears his name.[12] Businessmen flocked to Pakistan to offer high-tech equipment for what they had to know was a Pakistani bomb program.
The United States was hardly unaware of this. The NSA was routinely intercepting faxes and telexes from high-tech firms in Germany and Switzerland looking for a Pakistani nuclear connection,[13] and they were aware of assistance coming from firms in Turkey. Indeed, dozens of démarches were issued to the Turkish government during the late 1970s and 1980s protesting ongoing shipments of electrical components—many of them made in the United States—to Pakistan. Turkey claimed that its export laws were insufficient to allow the government to interfere with such trade. After some time, Turkey passed a stronger export control law, but its enforcement was feeble. Additionally, the U.S. government refused to acknowledge the Turkish role officially because doing so would have required the cutoff of military assistance to an important NATO ally.
Warnings about the dangers of the Pakistani program were being constantly and publicly issued during this period, most prominently by Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio). In speeches, op-eds, and congressional testimony, Glenn warned that Pakistani nuclear weapons development, if not stopped, would lead to weapons technology finding its way to the Middle East, particularly to Iran.[14] It was a natural deduction to make: intelligence reports contained evidence of a Pakistani/Iranian nuclear cooperation agreement, and news reports quoted intelligence sources saying that Saudi Arabia and Libya were helping to finance the Pakistani bomb. These warnings had little effect on the Reagan or George H. W. Bush administrations, who did all they could to keep Congress in the dark about the details of the Pakistani program.
The Pressler amendment was not invoked until 1990, after the Soviets had left Afghanistan and despite intelligence that Pakistan had manufactured their first weapon nearly three years earlier. According to former deputy CIA director Richard Kerr, Pakistan had the bomb by 1987.[15] When then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto visited the United States in 1989, she was told that the determination of “no possession” made that year would be the last one.[16]
Yet, there is little evidence that any of Khan’s suppliers were shut down at the time. Khan realized that he could use the network he had created, now also including Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure, to enable other countries with nuclear ambitions to obtain critical components and materials for their own weapon programs, with Pakistan (and Khan) reaping large rewards in the process.
Marketing Khan’s Wares
Khan established his laboratory’s technical bona fides by having his scientists publish papers and reports, beginning in the late 1980s, on the design, construction, and testing of centrifuges.[17] These papers contained just enough details to make them credible without providing a blueprint for others to replicate the Pakistan machines. It was at about that time that Iranian scientists began receiving training in Pakistan (1988) and assistance for Iran’s centrifuge program in 1989. The Khan laboratory began publishing brochures, distributed at arms fairs, advertising equipment for sale that was useful in the construction and operation of centrifuges, including vacuum devices to enable rotors to spin in relatively frictionless chambers.[18]
The Khan laboratory was not the only one, however, touting sales and delivery of equipment useful for nuclear-enrichment purposes. In 1999, following its nuclear-weapon tests the previous year, the Pakistani government put out its own advertisement of procedures for the export of nuclear equipment and components. The ad also listed equipment for sale, including “gas centrifuges and magnet baffles for the separation of uranium isotopes.”[19] Musharraf later stated that the Pakistani government was not aware of nuclear transfers arranged via Khan or his laboratory.
The ads had the desired effect. Other countries began viewing Pakistan as a source for building nuclear weapons. Khan was contacted and began selling off surplus centrifuges and components.[20] Shipments were sometimes made using official government cargo planes to middlemen in other countries, who were used to disguise the origin of the cargo. Khan later arranged for parts to be ordered through his middlemen and to be delivered directly from his network sources. The spectrum of supplies that could be provided by the network included older and advanced centrifuges, bomb design (based on the original Chinese design given to Pakistan in 1983), electronic components, and advanced materials. The network also provided logistical and technical assistance. The network involved suppliers or middlemen located in a dozen countries, including Turkey, Malaysia, the UAE, Japan, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, Canada, South Africa, and Pakistan.
The sales were not only producing funds for support of Khan’s laboratory; they were also helping Pakistan in its development of missile capability, a program that was run out of the Khan laboratory as well. For years, North Korea had been selling missiles to Pakistan. Pakistan had been paying cash for the missiles but ran into a foreign currency reserves crunch around 1996.[21] At that point, it is believed, the North Koreans agreed to a barter transaction involving the provision of centrifuges in exchange for missiles. Khan has apparently made at least 13 visits to North Korea over the past decade that were known to U.S. intelligence.[22] Some reports suggest that North Korea and Iran (and Iraq prior to Operation Desert Storm) may have obtained uranium-melting information from Pakistan in the late 1980s.
In fact, Iran is believed to have been the first customer of Pakistan/Khan nuclear sales. A centrifuge sale took place around 1987, probably pursuant to the 1986 nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries. The precise origin of the Pakistani-Iranian nuclear connection is unclear and includes speculation that then-army chief Aslam Beg saw such cooperation as a way to finance Pakistan’s defense budget.[23] In any event, it apparently ended in the mid-1990s as a result of the civil war in Afghanistan.
Still, the help that Iran received from the Khan network, including advanced (P-2) centrifuge designs,[24] and the transfer of these and other technologies has helped lead to Iran’s emergence as a relatively near-term nuclear proliferation threat. In buying Khan’s wares, Iran took advantage of Article IV of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which made a just-under-the-threshold nuclear weapons program feasible and legal for an NPT signatory; facilitated a demand for nuclear-related components and equipment for such a program; and made it worthwhile for many high-tech companies, factories, and shippers to meet the demand.
Under Article IV, all states-parties to the NPT, including Iran and Libya, have the “inalienable right to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II.” Also, under Article IV, all states have “the right to participate in the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” This language allows a party of the NPT in good standing to develop the means to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium—key nuclear weapons materials that also have civilian uses—and stockpile them without limit as long as they are placed under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
Iran clearly desires to develop a facility capable of manufacturing HEU and may plan to escape ultimately from the NPT by invoking Article X. That article allows a party’s withdrawal without penalty by giving three months’ notice and declaring, with an explanation, that “extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of the treaty, have jeopardized [its] supreme interests.” Iran, which has agreed under pressure to suspend its nuclear enrichment development, is in violation of its safeguards commitments by not having informed the IAEA of equipment and materials it had either received from Khan or produced indigenously. The IAEA has taken the position thus far that the violations are technical in nature, not yet calling for referral to the UN Security Council.
9/11 and the Khan Network
The exposure of the Khan network resulted from its dealings with Libya, which began in the early 1990s. In October 2003, a German cargo ship, the BBC China, was intercepted at sea on its way to Tripoli and brought to an Italian port, where its cargo of components for 1,000 high-speed centrifuges were confiscated. The parts were made in Malaysia and shipped through the Middle East. The subsequent investigation by the IAEA resulted in a decision by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to dismantle his illegal nuclear program and provide transparency to his interactions with the Khan network. Among the revelations was the startling fact that the Libyans had received an early Pakistani-Chinese nuclear weapon design, suggesting that weapon designs were now in play in the international nuclear black market.
Musharraf, under pressure from the United States, forced Khan to “retire” but still pardoned him for his transgressions. Musharraf has refused to make Khan available for interrogation, but some have suggested that, as a quid pro quo for U.S. forbearance, Pakistan may have passed back some information to the U.S. government concerning the Khan network’s assistance to Iran and perhaps elsewhere.[25]
According to a briefing given to Pakistani journalists on February 1, 2004, by Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, commander of Pakistan’s Strategic Planning and Development Cell, Khan signed a 12-page confession in which he admitted to providing Iran, Libya, and North Korea with technical assistance and components for making high-speed centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium.[26] In addition, according to three of the 20 Pakistani journalists who attended the briefing, Khan was defending himself by saying that he was pressured to sell nuclear technologies by two (now deceased) individuals associated with Bhutto,[27] that nuclear assistance to Iran was approved by then-army chief Beg, and that the deal with North Korea was supported by two former army chiefs, one of whom is now Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.[28] Musharraf has also served as army chief. An independent interrogation of Khan and an investigation by the IAEA should be carried out to verify these claims.
Also requiring further investigation are the serious indications of possible nuclear collaboration involving Khan with Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt[29] and visits by Khan and his associates to Chad, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, and Sudan. Much more precise information is also needed regarding the trafficking routes used by Khan’s network for deliveries. Sea routes were used to deliver centrifuge components to Libya and Iran. Both sea and air were used to deliver missiles from North Korea to Pakistan, and both land and air were used to send uranium-enrichment equipment from Pakistan to North Korea.[30] The extent of available routes makes tracking such shipments a daunting task.
The reach of the Khan network in today’s technological environment strongly suggests that the arrests and administrative actions taken by various governments have not fully shut down the network or made it impossible to reconstitute interrupted sources of supply. We have also yet to draw appropriate lessons from the history of our involvement with Pakistan and the Khan network.
Lessons Not Learned
Khan’s downfall came soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks led to a renewed U.S. relationship with Pakistan. When the United States decided to bring down the Taliban government for hosting Osama bin Laden, it turned to its old friends in Pakistan who had long provided the Taliban with crucial assistance. Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf reversed course and supported the U.S.-led military operation against his former allies.
That move and Musharraf’s current assistance in the hunt for bin Laden has resulted in his being amply rewarded. He has received the lifting of all nonproliferation sanctions and the beginning of a multibillion-dollar aid program, despite his refusal to give up Khan to the IAEA for interrogation. Even another case of a Pakistani agent allegedly attempting to smuggle nuclear-related electronic components out of the United States has had no effect on our current cozy relationship with Musharraf, who presides over a military containing elements friendly to Islamic revolutionary fundamentalism. It is the “blind eye” redux, but with the Cold War replaced by the war on terrorism. Of course, this time there is an added peril: who will gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons should Musharraf fall?
One lesson we should have learned from the history of our relations with Pakistan is that taking nonproliferation off the table in favor of pursuing other foreign policy goals may not help you achieve those goals, but will almost certainly result in proliferation. That does not mean that engagement with proliferators or potential proliferators is to be avoided. Rather, it means that engagement should be pursued with an objective of preventing, halting, or at least capping proliferation.
Although each case of proliferation has its own unique elements that must inform both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, if a “norm” is to be respected, there should be consequences for a proliferator if all attempts at diplomacy have failed. This is the most obvious gap in the nonproliferation system: there is no international consensus on the penalties to which a proliferator ought to be subjected. Pakistan has escaped significant penalties despite its horrific proliferation record.
Being able to catch potential proliferators may be of little consequence if there is no agreement on what to do afterward, but catching proliferators early is also crucial if there is to be an effective nonproliferation regime. That requires an integrated, worldwide, intelligence operation, with a substantial human intelligence capability.
An effective regime also requires constant review and improvement of export controls. The Khan network has made it imperative that export controls be applied to smaller specialized components than is currently the case. This evolution is particularly important in the case of fuel cycle facilities.
Khan’s ties with Iran and other countries point to another necessary remedy: the need to establish a new global norm regarding the use of nuclear energy. A new nuclear compact along that line should state that all new, major nuclear facilities are to be multinationally owned and operated. This is not as radical as it may seem; indeed, the Acheson-Lilienthal recommendations on nuclear control right after World War II proposed international ownership of the most dangerous nuclear facilities.[31] More recently, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei has proposed an idea along this line but limited to new fuel-cycle and waste disposal facilities.[32] Nuclear reactors themselves would not be included in his proposal.
President George W. Bush has a different proposal to limit fuel cycle facilities. In a Feb. 11, 2004, speech, he proposed a ban on assistance by members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for the construction of new enrichment and reprocessing facilities in countries not currently possessing such plants.[33] He did not back this up with a proposal for sanctions against those suppliers who would violate such a ban.
In his remarks, Bush also called on nuclear exporters to ensure that states have reliable access at reasonable cost to civilian nuclear fuel if they renounce enrichment and reprocessing. It is unclear if Bush is aware that one version of this proposal has been part of U.S. law for more than 25 years. Title I of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (NNPA) of 1978 calls on the president to work with other countries to create an International Nuclear Fuel Authority (INFA) to guarantee nuclear enrichment services to non-nuclear-weapon states that agree not to build enrichment and reprocessing plants. There is some irony here because it has been reported that the president is opposed to the idea of international consortia in this arena.[34]
The president proclaimed correctly that “enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” Further, the administration has supported crafting a treaty, albeit without verification measures, to cut off production of fissile material for weapons. (See ACT, September 2004.) Neither Bush nor his aides, however, have called for a universal fissile material cutoff treaty that would end production of those materials in military and civilian facilities. Nor has Bush said that the United States should seek to amend its nuclear agreements with other countries to bar the reprocessing of U.S.-origin spent fuel for plutonium extraction.
A sensible extension of the president’s remarks about fuel cycle facilities would be to propose that nations should only seek nuclear energy when it is cost-effective for them to do so. This suggests that, instead of the Atoms for Peace program, which formed the foundation of the NPT, it would be more sensible from a security standpoint to begin an “Energy for Peace” program that would include cooperative assistance in energy planning to help determine the best, most efficient mix of energy technologies for individual countries. This idea was also made part of U.S. law in Title V of the NNPA but, as with an INFA, has yet to be implemented. Under an “energy for peace” philosophy, nuclear energy would only be used if it competed economically with alternative sources, taking into account environmental and other costs, including security.
Ultimately, the best insurance against the emergence of future Khan networks is the elimination of nations’ motivations for seeking nuclear weapons. The president stated that nuclear weapons “will not bring security or international prestige.” That is unfortunately not the way many view those weapons, including many in the president’s own administration, but the elimination of nuclear weapons is an appropriate goal to pursue. The nuclear-weapon states could take the first steps by a more forceful implementation of their own commitments under the NPT to make good faith efforts toward nuclear disarmament.
ENDNOTES
1. Seymour Hersh, “On the Nuclear Edge,” The New Yorker, March 29, 1993.
2. Ibid.
3. Jamshed Nazar, “A History of U.S.-Pakistan Relations,” Chowk, November 22, 2004.
4. The 1976 Symington amendment provided that any non-nuclear-weapon state importing or exporting unsafe, guarded enrichment materials, equipment, or technology would be prohibited from receiving U.S. economic or military assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act or the Arms Export Control Act. Pakistan’s importation of unsafeguarded nuclear materials and equipment for its Kahuta enrichment facility triggered the cutoff of U.S. assistance.
5. The 1977 Glenn amendment extended the Symington prohibitions and penalties to the import or export of reprocessing technology, materials, or equipment by a non-nuclear-weapon state regardless of whether safeguards are attached. It also prohibited the explosion of a nuclear device. Pakistan was in violation of this amendment as well. Both amendments contained presidential waiver authority, but the conditions for exercise of the waiver under the Symington amendment required the receipt of “reliable assurances” that no nuclear weapon was being developed. As a result, legislation was required to allow a waiver for Pakistan, whose assurances were not deemed reliable.
6. Brzezinski revealed this in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur.
7. See Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).
8. Ibid.
9. The Pressler amendment required that, in order for Pakistan to receive economic or military assistance in any fiscal year, the president had to certify a priori that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the U.S. assistance program would reduce significantly the risk that Pakistan would possess such a device. Pakistan’s continued progress on the bomb in the face of U.S. assistance meant that it was in violation of the Pressler amendment from the first subsequent delivery of U.S. assistance, but the Department of State essentially refused to implement the law, insisting that there was no difference between the “possession” test and the “risk” test. This refusal continued until the Soviets left Afghanistan.
10. The Solarz amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act prohibited military and economic assistance to any non-nuclear-weapon state that illegally exports or attempts to export nuclear-related items from the United States that would contribute significantly to the ability of that state to manufacture a nuclear explosive device. A presidential waiver of penalties was included.
11. When a Pakistani agent was caught violating the Solarz amendment, President Ronald Reagan imposed the penalty and then immediately issued another waiver to remove it. In another case, the violator was treated as if he was an independent contractor with no connection to the Pakistani government, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
12. William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, and Raymond Bonner, “A Tale of Nuclear Proliferation: How Pakistani Built His Network,” The New York Times, February 12, 2004.
13. Hersh, “On the Nuclear Edge.”
14. See John Glenn, “Pakistan’s Bomb and the Mujahedin,” The Washington Post, November 4, 1987.
15. Hersh, “On the Nuclear Edge.”
16. Ibid.
17. David E. Sanger, “The Khan Network,” Paper presented at the Conference on South Asia and the Nuclear Future, CISAC, Stanford University, June 4, 2004.
18. Ibid.
19. Sharon Squassoni, “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade Between North Korea and Pakistan,” CRS Report for Congress, RL31900, May 7, 2003.
20. Broad, Sanger, and Bonner, “A Tale of Nuclear Proliferation.”
21. Squassoni, “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
22. Seymour Hersh, “The Cold Test,” The New Yorker, January 27, 2003.
23. Gaurav Kampani, “Proliferation Unbound: Nuclear Tales From Pakistan,” Report for Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute for International Studies, February 23, 2004.
24. International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Report by the Director General,” GOV/2004/83, November 15, 2004.
25. See Seymour Hersh, “The Coming Wars,” The New Yorker, January 24 and 31, 2005.
26. John Lancaster and Kamran Khan, “Musharraf Named in Nuclear Probe,” The Washington Post, February 3, 2004.
27. David Rohde, “Pakistanis Question Official Ignorance of Atom Transfers,” The New York Times, February 2, 2004.
28. Lancaster and Khan, “Musharraf Named in Nuclear Probe.”
29. Christopher Clary, “A.Q. Khan and the Limits of the Nonproliferation Regime,” The Disarmament Forum, 2004.
30. Andrew Prosser, “Nuclear Trafficking Routes: Dangerous Trends in Southern Asia,” Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC, November 22, 2004.
31. “Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy,” Washington, DC, March 16, 1946.
32. Mohamed ElBaradei, “In Search of Security: Finding an Alternative to Nuclear Deterrence,” Presented at CISAC, Stanford University, November 4, 2004.
33. Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “President Announces New Measures to Counter the Threat of WMD,” February 11, 2004.
34. See Carla A. Robbins, “Nuclear Nonproliferation Effort Snags,” The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2005.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leonard Weiss has worked on nonproliferation issues and legislation for nearly 30 years as a consultant and former staff director of the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. He was a chief architect of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978.
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/2 ... -8706r.htm
Bhutto missile story raises Hill hackles
By Peter Roff
UPI Senior Political Analyst
Published 3/7/2005 6:54 PM
WASHINGTON, March 7 (UPI) -- Members of the U.S. Congress reacted with concern Monday to a report that North Korean missile blueprints had been couriered to Pakistan for use in its missile program by Benazir Bhutto while she was prime minister.
The report, published Monday by United Press International, said Bhutto told a group of Pakistani journalists in Washington that her country purchased the designs for the short- and medium-range missiles for cash and that no transfer of nuclear technology was involved.
Bhutto did allow, however, that following her tenure as head of the Islamabad-based government, Pakistani representatives might have engineered the exchange of nuclear technology for actual missiles in the period after international sanctions were placed on her country following its 1998 nuclear test.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said Bhutto's disclosure points up the need for a stricter regime of international controls governing the spread of nuclear and missile technology.
"These reports underscore the profound implications for global security if and when rogue regimes like North Korea sell such blueprints or even nuclear devices to terrorist groups," Brownback said.
"What we've done with Afghanistan and Iraq is crucial and an important step," Brownback continued, labeling Bhutto's disclosure as evidence of the need for closer cooperation between the United States and "all interested parties around the world to stop the spread of WMDs and missile technologies."
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., a member of the House International Relations Committee, labeled the report a demonstration of "both the arrogance and insanity of Pakistani leaders who wasted money pursuing rocket and nuclear technology while their own people go hungry and are denied adequate healthcare and education."
"The more serious question," he continued, "is where did North Korea obtain the technology that was passed on to Pakistan?"
To Rohrabacher, the answer is obvious. "The real villain," he said, "is China, which continues to play its normal, despicable role."
Bhutto told UPI that in 1993, as she headed to North Korea on a state visit, scientists working on Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs asked her to bring back blueprints of North Korean missiles that had a longer range than those possessed at the time by either Pakistan or India.
"These were not nuclear missiles but had the capability to carry nuclear weapons," Bhutto said. "I was told, 'Only you can bring these blueprints.'"
Bhutto told UPI that she had only offered cash to the North Koreans for the missile technology. "It was a cash transaction -- no exchange of nuclear technology. Exchanging nuclear technology for missiles was never even discussed during my visit."
Lookee here. This is the thrid place I've seen this article by MAB. What's going on!
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/2 ... -6594r.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/2 ... -6594r.htm
Outside View: Nuke proliferators can't be stopped
By Mirza Aslam Beg
Outside View Commentator
Published 3/7/2005 4:25 PM
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, March 7 (UPI) -- Early last year when Abdul Qadeer Khan was targeted for alleged nuclear proliferation, I was also implicated and remained under the world media's focus.
During an NBC TV network interview, I was asked the question whether I would like my future generations to live in this part of the world, which is threatened by nuclear holocaust. I said: Yes, certainly, I would like my future generations to live in South Asia where I see no threat of nuclear war, because perfect nuclear deterrence holds between India and Pakistan. But certainly I would not like my future generations to live in the neighborhood of "nuclear capable Israel."
He questioned: In that case would you like to pass on the nuclear capability to Iran, which considers itself threatened by Israel? I said no. Countries acquire the capability on their own, as we have done it. Iran will do the same, because they are threatened by Israel. The media hype and the consequences of the reported nuclear proliferation, led to the tormenting treatment meted out to Khan.
For a long time, Americans and Europeans have been engaged in nuclear proliferation, as part of a concept, called "outsourcing nuclear capability," to friendly countries as a measure of defense against nuclear strikes. The concept is interesting as well as regrettable. The Natural Resource Defense Council of the United States reveals in its report that: "A specific number of nuclear warheads, under U.S. and NATO war plans, will be transferred to America's non-nuclear allies to be delivered to targets by their warplanes. Preparations for delivering 180 nuclear bombs are taking place in peacetime, and equipping non-nuclear countries with the means to conduct nuclear warfare, (which) is inconsistent with today's international efforts to dissuade other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. The arsenal is being kept at eight Air Force bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Britain. The strike plans' potential targets are Russia and countries in the Middle East -- most likely Iran and Syria." (NRDC: emins.org)
It would be appropriate to call this concept as "enlightened nuclear proliferation" being implemented by those who are responsible for nuclear non-proliferation regime.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, nuclear scientists and nuclear material of all kinds proliferated: "Half of the nuclear materials, pieces and parts of it, are unaccounted for by the Russians -- and a lot of them, are at places in rural areas, which is more threatening to the world right now." India, "according to international media -- February 2004, reported 25 cases of 'missing' or 'stolen' radioactive material from its labs to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Fifty-two percent of the cases were attributed to 'theft' and 48 percent to 'missing mystery.' India claimed to have recovered lost material in 12 of the total 25 cases." How innocently simple, is the way of "innocent nuclear proliferation."
For quite a while, North Korea has been complaining about nuclear warheads placed in South Korea by the United States, which prompted North Korea to develop its own nuclear weapon capability.
In Pakistan's neighborhood, Iran is under tremendous pressure, for allegedly attempting to develop the nuclear weapons, which Iran has denied. The war of nerves between the United States and Iran thus has been going on for quite sometime. On Feb. 16 very disturbing news was splashed on a Pakistani private TV channel, picked up from Tehran Radio, that 12 of the suspected Iranian nuclear sites had been hit by missiles.
The news was really alarming but gradually it transpired that, some rock blasting occurred in the southern region of Iran, which was taken as missile attacks. Whether the news was fake or prompted, it did help Iran test the nerves of United States and Israel, because both promptly denied that any such strike was carried out. Thus deterrence between Iran and Israel now has appears to have crossed the threshold of ambiguity, which, indeed is significant.
While Iran has tested the nerves of its adversaries, North Korea has corrected the imbalance in South East Asia by declaring its capability. Since both are termed "rogue states," it would be proper to call it "rogue nuclear proliferation."
Nuclear deterrence between Iran and Israel has crossed the psychological barrier. Nuclear deterrence between South and North Korea has already been established. Therefore, the nuclear fault line of the 21st century, now extends from Israel to Iran, Pakistan to India and South Korea to North Korea, while the strategic balance is held by the United States and Europe on one side and Russia and China on the other.
The nuclear non-proliferation regime, therefore, is dying its natural death at the hands of those who are the exponents of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. How the new balance of terror will be maintained from Mediterranean to Pacific is a task for those who, having themselves violated the nuclear proliferation regime, are now responsible for maintaining global nuclear peace. The world now has to wait and see how objectives of the utopian nuclear non-proliferation regime are achieved.
At the beginning of the new era, the emerging multipolar world order is facing the formidable challenge of a dangerous global nuclear security paradigm. Fortunately, the emerging multipolar global order is expected to be less confrontational than the bipolar world order and less brutal and tyrannical than the unipolar world order of today.
With at least six competing geo-economic centers of power, the new world order would be more democratic in nature as it would be governed by forces of globalization and integrative economic demands. Such democratization of the world order will bring sanity into the entire gambit of nuclear proliferation. The "enlightened proliferators" together, with the "innocent," and the "rogue proliferators," would democratize the global nuclear non-proliferation order. This may be the only hope for all living beings inhabiting this wretched earth.
--
(Khan is the father of Pakistan's nuclear program who confessed on Feb. 6, 2004, to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The author, Mirza Aslam Beg, is the former chief of the Pakistan Army.)
And Pakistan ramains a MuNNA, a trusted alley in fight against Terrorism.
BBC: Iran 'given Pakistan centrifuges'
Pakistan has confirmed that the former head of its nuclear weapons programme, AQ Khan, gave centrifuges for enriching uranium to Iran.
It is the first time Pakistani officials have publicised details of what nuclear materials the disgraced scientist passed on to Iran.
Information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the BBC's Urdu service that "a few" centrifuges were involved.
Iran is under international pressure over its nuclear ambitions.
The Pakistani information minister stated again on Thursday that his government had no knowledge of Dr Khan's activities.
Last month he dismissed reports that the US was probing whether Dr Khan had sold nuclear secrets to Arab nations.
Click here to see how a gas centrifuge works
European countries and the UN recently joined the US in criticising Iran for allegedly not keeping a pledge to suspend uranium enrichment activities.
UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said this month that the "ball is very much in Iran's court to come clean".
The US accuses Iran of cynically pursuing nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists its programme is peaceful.
Nation shocked
The US has called Dr Khan the "biggest proliferator" of nuclear technology.
He shocked Pakistan early last year when he went on television and confessed to leaking nuclear secrets.
He said he took full responsibility for proliferating nuclear weapons to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Dr Khan had held the post of scientific adviser since retiring as head of the country's top nuclear facility in 2001 but was sacked after his confession.
He has been held under virtual house since his confession.
Although the government has passed on information about his former activities to the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority, it will not let any foreign officials interview him.
BBC: Iran 'given Pakistan centrifuges'
Pakistan has confirmed that the former head of its nuclear weapons programme, AQ Khan, gave centrifuges for enriching uranium to Iran.
It is the first time Pakistani officials have publicised details of what nuclear materials the disgraced scientist passed on to Iran.
Information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the BBC's Urdu service that "a few" centrifuges were involved.
Iran is under international pressure over its nuclear ambitions.
The Pakistani information minister stated again on Thursday that his government had no knowledge of Dr Khan's activities.
Last month he dismissed reports that the US was probing whether Dr Khan had sold nuclear secrets to Arab nations.
Click here to see how a gas centrifuge works
European countries and the UN recently joined the US in criticising Iran for allegedly not keeping a pledge to suspend uranium enrichment activities.
UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said this month that the "ball is very much in Iran's court to come clean".
The US accuses Iran of cynically pursuing nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists its programme is peaceful.
Nation shocked
The US has called Dr Khan the "biggest proliferator" of nuclear technology.
He shocked Pakistan early last year when he went on television and confessed to leaking nuclear secrets.
He said he took full responsibility for proliferating nuclear weapons to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Dr Khan had held the post of scientific adviser since retiring as head of the country's top nuclear facility in 2001 but was sacked after his confession.
He has been held under virtual house since his confession.
Although the government has passed on information about his former activities to the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority, it will not let any foreign officials interview him.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holn ... 101961.htm Pak. Govt. acknowledges rogue scientist gave nuclear centrifuges to Iran
Those with comcast in the US try to see "Avoiding Armageddon" on Sunday.The first 30 minutes covers the nuclear issue in south Asia.It shows interviews of Clinton and Inderfurth and how they squeezed
Sharif's balls to force a withdrawl during the Kargil crisis.One can see a clear difference between Bush and Clinton in dealing with typical puki blackmail.When Sharif told Clinton that if he ordered a withdrawl there would be a bearded Mullah sitting in his place very soon.Clinton told him that he has very little patience for this kind of blackmail and Sharif can shove his argument in his musharraf.
There is also some entertainment in form of Pervez Hoodboy saying something too profound for me to understand and reproduce it here.If somebody does please inform me too.
Details for the programme:
Nuclear Nightmares: Losing Control
WGBH channels only on Comcast
Sun, March 13, 6pm, WGBH World (209)
Sharif's balls to force a withdrawl during the Kargil crisis.One can see a clear difference between Bush and Clinton in dealing with typical puki blackmail.When Sharif told Clinton that if he ordered a withdrawl there would be a bearded Mullah sitting in his place very soon.Clinton told him that he has very little patience for this kind of blackmail and Sharif can shove his argument in his musharraf.
There is also some entertainment in form of Pervez Hoodboy saying something too profound for me to understand and reproduce it here.If somebody does please inform me too.
Details for the programme:
Nuclear Nightmares: Losing Control
WGBH channels only on Comcast
Sun, March 13, 6pm, WGBH World (209)
Fox news story too: Pakistan: Khan Gave Nuke Material to Iran
Pakistan: Khan Gave Nuke Material to Iran
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Kashmir Snow Death Toll Nears 300
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's information minister acknowledged on Thursday that a rogue scientist at the heart of an international nuclear black market investigation gave centrifuges to Iran (search), but insisted the government had nothing to do with the transfer.
It was the first time the Pakistani government has admitted that Abdul Qadeer Khan (search) actually gave material to Iran, though they have said in the past that his criminal group sold technology and blueprints to several countries.
"Dr. Abdul Qadeer gave some centrifuges to Iran," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "He helped Iran in his personal capacity, and the Pakistan government had nothing to do with it."
Ahmed originally made the comments at a seminar in Islamabad (search) organized by a local newspaper group, in which he stuck by Pakistan's insistence that despite his crimes, Khan would never be handed over to a third country for prosecution.
Ahmed told AP that Islamabad is fully cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (search), the world's nuclear watchdog.
Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's own nuclear program, confessed last year that he sold nuclear technology to Iran -- Pakistan's southwestern neighbor -- as well as North Korea (search) and Libya. The investigation into his group's activities has widened to include several other countries as well.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned the disgraced scientist and allowed him to keep the riches he allegedly earned from the trade. However, Khan remains restricted to his home in an upscale neighborhood of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
The government has steadfastly denied any official involvement in the proliferation, despite reports Khan flew to North Korea on a government plane.
On Sunday, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani admitted his country secretly dipped into the black market to buy material, saying it was necessary because of U.S. sanctions and European restrictions that denied Iran access to advanced civilian nuclear technology.
Since last year Iran has publicly acknowledged that it once bought nuclear equipment from middlemen in south Asia, lending credence to reports that Khan was one of the suppliers.
The Paki mea culpa at teh outset is aimed at turning the screws on Iran and not on their role in the transfer of WMD technology and equipment. It also provides palusible deniability to Iran to say the HEU sample s found by IAEA were from these very same centrifuges delivered by AQK. So its a typical case of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.
If Iran can prove the involvement of Paki Govt / military institutions in terms of some televised events, documents etc, would nail pakistan in its butts. That way, Iran can screw america even before the arrival of Rice to the region. By doing so, Iran would make America concentrate on MuNNA relationships and its headaches with pakistan more than Iraninan nukes
itself.
It also open our defence sales to Iran in a more open form than this fearing uncle for everything.. We can't sell radars to Iran, but China and Russia are able to join in in setting up satellites for Iran.
If Iran can scratch our back, we can. Its all how they want to play. The only thing they have is oil., unfortunately even their brains are filled with them.
If iran plays its card well, it could also lead to not only destroying munna relationship, but it can break up pakistan, with the help of india, russia and others. It would also help the americans to open the battle against the real obl gangs in the streets of pakistan. furthermore, iran could also be thinking of in 5 years time having a pipeline to india, without pakistan in between [re-mapped].
itself.
It also open our defence sales to Iran in a more open form than this fearing uncle for everything.. We can't sell radars to Iran, but China and Russia are able to join in in setting up satellites for Iran.
If Iran can scratch our back, we can. Its all how they want to play. The only thing they have is oil., unfortunately even their brains are filled with them.
If iran plays its card well, it could also lead to not only destroying munna relationship, but it can break up pakistan, with the help of india, russia and others. It would also help the americans to open the battle against the real obl gangs in the streets of pakistan. furthermore, iran could also be thinking of in 5 years time having a pipeline to india, without pakistan in between [re-mapped].
The story that refuses to die
By Aamer Ahmed Khan
BBC News
11 Mar 2005
Dr AQ Khan was once revered in Pakistan as the father of the country's nuclear weapons development programme.
He is now a pariah spending time in virtual house arrest in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, a city that was once his citadel.
On 3 February, 2004, Dr Khan went on national TV to admit that he had shared Pakistan's coveted nuclear secrets to groups and nations who aspired to building weapons of mass destruction.
He sought forgiveness from his countrymen, accepting full responsibility for his actions and absolving all Pakistani governments of any blame.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf called national editors to Islamabad shortly after Dr Khan's disclosures and asked them to forget about the whole affair.
The man responsible had suffered a total loss of prestige and therefore needed no further punishment, the president said.
Journalists were told that Pakistan would have faced horrendous consequences had Dr Khan not been asked to admit to his clandestine activities.
But now it was all over and it was best to let sleeping dogs lie, Gen Musharraf had concluded, firmly.
Most did as they were told.
'More dangerous'
Yet a year after those sensational events, the story refuses to die.
As the global anti-proliferation tightens its net around the states harbouring not-so-secret nuclear ambitions, Dr Khan's name keeps creeping up again and again.
In a 14 February cover story by Time magazine titled Merchant of Menace, the magazine said that Dr Khan had single-handedly made the world a more dangerous place than was previously imaginable.
The Time magazine report said that the proliferation network put together by Dr Khan was "still operational".
That was swiftly denied by the government in Islamabad.
Now the Pakistan government has formally admitted that Dr Khan had given "a few centrifuges" to Iran.
Major US publications have continued to follow the story, refusing to believe the Pakistan government's claim that the AQ Khan saga was over.
That may not be hard to understand, given the macabre scenarios associated with the prospects of theft and use of nuclear materials for terrorist purposes.
What is perhaps less comprehensible is the lukewarm response that such stories now generate in Pakistan, a country that many in the West believe ought to be more worried about the affair than any other.
The answer, say analysts, may lie in the curious nature of the US-Pakistan relationship.
Classified information of any nature, argue these analysts, has become a highly valuable bargaining chip in the post-September 2001 world.
Few countries appreciate this more than Pakistan, which has used its knowledge of the al-Qaeda network with great dexterity in what analysts have often described as its thrust-and-parry relationship with the US.
In doing that, say analysts, Pakistan is only putting into use some bitter lessons it learnt from the Afghan war.
Pakistan stunned
Simply put, the most important of these lessons says that the moment you give your more powerful allies all that they need, they have no more use for you.
Pakistan's role in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan was not enough to keep the western world its ally forever.
Once the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan towards the end of the 1980s, the US lost interest in the region with a finality that left its allies in the Pakistani establishment stunned.
Its current role in the proliferation business, however willingly and competently it is played, is similarly unlikely to permanently endear the West to a country that is seen to have been unable to look after its destructive technologies in the first place.
Perhaps Pakistan has decided to play it bit by bit, say analysts, and thereby ensure being a vital part of the game for as long as the game lasts.
If information is a strategic asset, it must be spent with extreme caution. And with a miserly hand. As an asset, especially for a military government, information is to be used to keep allies grateful - and dependent.
It may look like a dangerous game. But for countries such as Pakistan, the world has always been a dangerous place.
In the 1980s, Pakistan and its surrounding region was supplying the world with a bulk of its narcotics. In the 1990s, the same region was turning into the hub of a global terror regime.
Half way through the first decade of the 21st century, the country finds itself at the centre of a worldwide nuclear proliferation controversy.
Pakistani analysts thus seem convinced that the AQ Khan affair is here to stay.
The world may get to learn a lot more about it, but only over a period of time, only bit by bit.
BBC