Pakistan Nuclear Proliferation

[arun]

Back in 2004 :

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 11, 2004

President Announces New Measures to Counter the Threat of WMD
Remarks by the President on Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation

Fort Lesley J. McNair - National Defense University
Washington, D.C.

………. Khan's deputy -- a man named B.S.A. Tahir -- ran SMB computers, a business in Dubai. Tahir used that computer company as a front for the proliferation activities of the A. Q. Khan network. Tahir acted as both the network's chief financial officer and money launderer. He was also its shipping agent, using his computer firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients. Tahir directed the Malaysia facility to produce these parts based on Pakistani designs, and then ordered the facility to ship the components to Dubai. Tahir also arranged for parts acquired by other European procurement agents to transit through Dubai for shipment to other customers. ……..

White House Press Release

[Gerard]

Pakistan's Khan says centrifuges sold to Iran as scrap

Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan told investigators that contaminated and used centrifuges found in Iran by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in 2003 were sold by his laboratory as scrap to a Karachi-based company, according to a friend of Khan.

[ramana]

Pakistan's Khan says centrifuges sold to Iran as scrap

Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan told investigators that contaminated and used centrifuges found in Iran by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in 2003 were sold by his laboratory as scrap to a Karachi-based company, according to a friend of Khan.

The blowback is getting serious. Maybe there are requests to de-brief him. In the aftermath of the Nukemart revelations he claimed he did all this single handed and now he claims its scrap material.
The real thing is what else he sold? And to whom?

[John Snow]

The scrap dealer is a Dawoodi Bohra, who are traditionally into hardware, scrap metal trading etc.

[Gerard]

Detained Pakistani nuclear scientist meets lawyer

[Sanjay M]

BBC News
18:15 GMT, Friday, 4 July 2008

Pakistan 'knew of nuclear flight'

Disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan (undated file photo)
It was a North Korean plane, and the army had complete knowledge about it and the equipment

In media interviews, he said that the army supervised a flight of centrifuges to Pyongyang in 2000.

At the time, the current President Pervez Musharraf was head of the army.

[Rishi]

More on above:
http://www.dawn.com/2008/07/05/top1.htm

ISLAMABAD, July 4: Detained nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan on Friday accused President Pervez Musharraf and the army of being involved in transferring nuclear technology to North Korea.

Asked what was his involvement in the transfer of nuclear technology, he said only that (Used P-1) centrifuges had been picked from Kahuta.

“It was a North Korean plane and the army had complete knowledge about it and the equipment,” Dr Khan said.

“It must have gone with his (Musharraf’s) consent.

Dr Khan said he had visited North Korea twice, in 1994 and then in 1999, when he was sent to procure missiles during the so-called Kargil conflict.

Dr Khan told Kyodo that the missiles were shoulder-fired SA 15.

Dr Khan told AP that Musharraf had requested him to make the second trip and he did so accompanied on a special plane by General Iftikhar Hussain Shah.

[SSridhar]

This thread is in danger of being closed

because, the Pakistani Foreign Office says so.

Pakistan foreign office spokesman Friday said that Pakistan's nuclear proliferation issue is a closed chapter. {That's it folks. There ends the matter} He was reacting to an interview nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan gave to The Associated Press claiming that the uranium enrichment equipment was sent from Pakistan to North Korea in a North Korean plane that was loaded under the supervision of Pakistani security officials.

So, all the following now remain closed. As simple as that. Just a one-liner from the Foreign Office of the Government of the Faithful is enough. After all, they are Momin, ain't they ?

The US Government began to take notice of the clandestine Pakistan acquisitions of nuclear material in several European countries as well as the US as well as the transfer of proscribed technologies from China and North Korea, leading to Pres. George Bush Sr. refusing to certify to the US Congress in Oct. 1990 that “Pakistan did not possess a nuclear weapon”. But, it was too late by than as Pakistan already had the weapon in her hand having done a cold test in 1983 (a test in which everything is tested with natural uranium replacing the enriched uranium as the core so that the chain reaction is not sustained) and then a clandestine device test in Lop Nor in 1989. It is now confirmed that Pakistan indeed possessed nuclear weapons as early as 1985 or 1984. However, Ms. Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan and the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, another former Prime Minister, said that Pakistan possessed all the components for a weapon even by 1977. It is inconceivable that a country with so little investment in higher education, industrial base, R&D institutions, a faltering economy and where only eight patents have been registered in the previous 43 years since its independence (compare this with the patents applied for and granted to other countries), could build a nuclear weapon. The Chinese had parted with the weapon design (the blueprints for a weapon that China had detonated in its fourth nuclear test in 1966), a design that was compact (34 Inches diameter) and that could easily fit atop a missile, and the missile technologies themselves, possibly in return for Uranium centrifuge technology for China and also as a token of appreciation for normalizing its relationship with the US and certainly with the ulterior intention of bottling up India's progress through a hostile Western neighbour, while the entire project was bankrolled by various countries with a vested interest in the project. The Chinese help has since been obliquely accepted by Pakistan in the Dr. AQ Khan issue of nuclear proliferation and has also been exposed in the Libyan affair. As if that was not enough, Pakistan soon began to trade the nuclear weapon technologies with states like Libya - for which country it gave Uranium Hexafluoride and also a 10 Kiloton Chinese nuclear weapon design - Iraq, North Korea , Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran for which country it possibly gave advanced centrifuge designs also, Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) as well as bomb design. The clandestine nature of the Pakistani nuclear program had to depend on stolen and illegally obtained technologies and components, apart from the assistance of the Chinese, as the country did not have the requisite technological, industrial or scientific base. The connivance of the various heads of Government of Pakistan, the Army and the scientists in not only its weapons program but also in horizontal proliferation have come to light in the recent exposé. and even widely accepted within Pakistan. In circa 2000, the Pakistani Atomic Energy Corp. (PAEC) even advertised in the newspapers offering specific nuclear material and expertise for sale. Pakistan was not only liaising with other states in transfer of nuclear weapon technologies, but also with a terrorist organization like Al-Qaeda. All this led the Chief of IAEA, Mohammed El-Baradei to call this Pakistani activity as the Wal-mart of proliferation and the US Sub-Committee on Terrorism and Proliferation call as Home-Depot of proliferation. However, even after the surfacing of such roguish behaviour that has been owned-up by Pakistan itself, jeopardising the whole world, the US Government exonerated the Pakistani government as it needed the services of the latter in nabbing the Al Qaeda top hierarchy operating from the porous borders between Afgahnistan and Pakistan. After having strenuously denied any culpability in proliferation to and from North Korea, the Pakistani President Gen. Musharraf eventually admitted to it. Some of the clandestine dealings of the Pakistani Government have been admitted to by Pakistani newspapers themselves recently. Like in the 80s, the US Government has again turned a blind eye to Pakistani attempts to procure clandestinely nuclear-related components from the US companies. It has been recently admitted by the Swiss government that it destroyed vital evidences of nuclear proliferation by a Swiss family which was part of Dr.A.Q.Khan’s network. By mid-2008, it turned out that the what the Swiss government destroyed was an advanced design for miniaturized nuclear weapon that A.Q.Khan had given. Pakistan continues to clandestinely procure nuclear-weapon related equipments from the US markets.The Pakistani establishment today presents the greatest nuclear threat to the world at large. Again, in order to deliver these WMDs across large distances of India, Pakistan engaged in clandestinely proliferating missiles and missile parts, especially from China. While China was a signatory to MTCR, it still allowed such transfers of ballistic missile components with a view to bottling up India militarily as part of its “encircling” game vis-à-vis India. It was only in circa 2008 that a worried US Goernment sought direct access to the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) of Pakistan.

[SSridhar]

More facts are tumbling out.

DG, SPD, Lt. Gen. Kidwai says

He said the involvement of Dr. A.Q. Khan in North Korea’s issue came to surface which led to his debriefing. “Dr. Khan confessed and sought pardon from President Pervez Musharraf. On this the President said Dr. Khan should seek forgiveness from the nation.”

“Dr. A.Q. Khan has not taken upon him the blame for others’ wrongdoings… he was not under any pressure nor any deal was struck with him,” Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Khalid Qidwai maintained.

He said the draft of address to the nation was prepared at National Command Authority and that Dr. A.Q. Khan agreed to read it after going through it in detail and also making some changes to it. “He was not under any pressure.”

This is what AQK says

Pakistan’s nuclear scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan Saturday said he was handed a pre-written statement and was asked to read out the same with an assurance that doing this would correct everything but “now I will not stay silent anymore and react to the allegations immediately and in the similar tone.”

In reaction to the statement of the Director General of Strategic Plans Division, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Khalid Kidwai, he (Dr. A.Q. Khan) said “Dr. Kidwai has told a lie… I have not said anything on my own, I only repeated what President Musharraf had already said.”

“I only got one sentence added to the pre-written draft handed over to me, which read - I did it in good faith” Dr. A.Q. Khan said.

Earlier Report (Mar. 2005)

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.

The grand cover-up by Pakistan is beginning to unravel. The worry is AQK should live to tell his tale.

[SSridhar]

Offer to share proof with neutrals - DG, SPD

“We are ready to share the evidence with a select group of neutral persons,” Lt-Gen (retd) Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, the head of the division, said on Saturday in reaction to Dr Khan’s claim the previous day about the involvement of the Army in the smuggling of centrifuges to North Korea.

Khalid Kidwai, however, said it was for the government to decide about the ‘set of select people’ with whom the evidence can be shared.

He said Dr Khan had been offered to see his friends and relatives at their place several times. “He wants total freedom without security, which was not possible.” He said during his visit to National Sciences Academy, Dr Khan also asked a member of the proliferator’s group to reach there.{That then begs the question why that proliferator is free while Khan is under detention}

He said Dr Khan was asked to give a list of frequent visitors, who could be instantly facilitated when they come to see him. He said the list of 30 persons given by him included names of four persons who were quizzed in connection with the nuclear proliferation episode.{So, what is the story of this Gang of Four ? Were they just quizzed and let off ?}

[Gerard]

The problem of dealing with Pakistan's nuclear heroThe problem of dealing with Pakistan's nuclear hero

[Gerard]

Burying the matter

[Gerard]

Musharraf lied about Dr Khans role in Nuke program, alleges scientists wife

[arun]

A.Q. Khan's wife, Hendrina Khan in her own words.

Alleges the ISI and later the ISI and SPD were fully in the know about Pakistan proliferating nuclear weapon related technology to third countries:

08/11/2008 05:23 PM

'STABBED IN THE BACK'

Hendrina Khan on the Pakistani Government's Role

In an account published in SPIEGEL, the wife of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan -- the man accused of running a global nuclear weapons bazaar -- alleges that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf lied about her husband's role in the country's nuclear program. She says her husband was pressured to make a false confession and that he only carried out government orders.

Editor's note: This feature is part of a package. You can read the main background story here.

He did everything he could to achieve his goal and to create a nuclear bomb for Pakistan. He worked 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week. He traveled and was out of the country for a total of about five months a year. It didn't come easily and that makes it so sad to see the way he is being treated today, with a character assassination campaign being conducted against him.

He has already been living in Islamabad under house arrest for four-and-a-half years now, without having been accused of or prosecuted for anything. At least I have been able to leave the house for the last few months without a security guard. At no point has he been allowed in any way to defend himself against all the government-sponsored distortions of the truth and the outright lies contained in General Pervez Musharraf's memoir.

In the "Line of Fire," the president wrote: "On the basis of the thorough probe that we conducted in 2003-2004, I can say with confidence that neither the Pakistan Army nor any of the past governments of Pakistan was ever involved or had any knowledge of Abdul Qadir's proliferation activities. The show was completely and entirely Abdul Qadir's."

That statement is quickly refutable if you look at the security measures that were in place at at my husband's offices and places of work at the firm KRL in Rawalpindi, the nuclear facility in Kahuta and the satellite offices at Sihala and Golra. Despite General Musharraf's claim, the factual position is that, right from day one, the security and logistics of the project were in the hands of the army. There were hundreds of personnel serving under a brigadier; about half of these were in active service while the other half were retired military personnel. When I say hundreds, I mean a figure closer to 1,000 than 500.

In concrete terms, the air force and army personnel there served under a departmental general director. They were the ones who packed all the consignments and took them to the airplane for dispatch. Army personnel -- along with the secret service Interservices Intelligence (ISI) and later the Strategic Planning Division (SPD), which controlled all nuclear activities, both military and civilian -- supervised the loading and dispatch of the goods to foreign countries. They were also led by a general.

Similarly, all incoming consignments were received by KRL personnel in the presence of the ISI (and later the ISI and SPD), loaded onto the firm's own trucks and taken to their final destinations. There are official records of all of this. Under these circumstances, how would it have been possible for anyone to virtually run his own security? Consequently, if the army personnel knew exactly what was coming in and what was going out, how could Dr. Khan have acted alone? General Musharraf, on the other hand was three things at one time: He was the Army chief, chief executive and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Does it then seem likely that he knew nothing?

On Feb. 5, 2004, the president of the then-ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q) Party and later prime minister, Chaudry Shujaat, told the newspaper Dawn in an interview, "Dr. A.Q. Khan had saved the country from a major crisis by taking full responsibility for the nuclear proliferation issue. Dr. Khan has taken full responsibility himself in the national interests." It was the same Shujaat who was the intermediary between the government and my husband. He knew the country was under great pressure from outside -- from the Americans. He was very concerned about the country and was looking for a way out of the dilemma. For political reasons he was of the opinion that my husband should take sole blame. My husband, being a great patriot, went along with the idea.

On the same day as Shujaat's interview, President Musharraf announced at a press conference at the Army House in Rawalpindi that he had "accepted the cabinet suggestion and pardoned Dr. Khan. He also said: "He is a free man, but he is not allowed to go abroad."

We never even dreamed that Shujaat or the government would try to harm my husband or that the promises made would not be carried out. The promised freedom -- for travel inside Pakistan, for example -- never materialized. With the exception of a visit to the Academy of Sciences, the house arrest has never been lifted. Today my husband is treated as a traitor and he is constantly harassed.

Literally overnight he was cut off from communication with the outside world and any intellectual stimulation. This active man became a virtual couch potato. Our mobile phones are monitored, our whole house is fitted with listening devices. Anywhere we sit or walk, guards are conspicuous everywhere. Every aspect of our lives is determined by these guards.

When my husband needs to go to the dentist, appointments are arranged at night. The clinic staff are made to wait until it is dark. Doctors are the only people he is allowed to see outside the house.
In order to cope with the tremendous stress he was under, my husband was on anti-depressants for more than three years. My husband's health has been getting steadily worse. Radical prostate surgery in 2006 was followed only a few months later by deep vein thrombosis. This has also been very difficult for me.

The authorities claim that my husband's life is in danger. That is why they say he is not under "detention" but rather "protective custody," but it is definitely detention. That some foreign powers would like to question my husband is beyond doubt, since they feel that the information supplied to them by the Pakistani government has been edited and they only passed on what they wanted to be known. Whether they would actually go so far as to abduct him as the authorities here claim is an open question. When he was still working actively as a scientist, nobody did anything for my husband's safety. At the time his life was in real danger.

If the truth were to come out, it would cause the Pakistani Army great embarrassment because it would prove they were not as innocent as they claim to be and that the blame does not rest solely on one person as they have tried to make the whole world believe. For the concerned government, it is of course too late today to admit or to confess everything. The consequences for the country would be too drastic, especially from the Americans who have been supporting Musharraf through thick and thin.

The fact that many of the claims made by General Musharraf in his memoirs are false can be verified in documentation available in the KRL office. Of course the government would never give permission for those to be scrutinized. Most of the documents that prove my statements were removed when the Army ransacked our house in April 2006. But a few documents are still in our possession.

The worst thing for my husband is that he was stabbed in the back by his own people. I often ask myself what crimes it was supposed to be that my husband actually committed. His duty was to execute the instructions he was given by the Pakistani government. Pakistan was not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and no Pakistani laws were broken.

My husband traveled to North Korean twice, the second visit was made at the specific request of Gen. Musharraf. Pakistan and North Korea had enjoyed close cooperation since the days of then-Prime Minister Zulphikar Ali Bhutto's first visit to the country in 1976. My husband never traveled to Iran, he never visited Libya and he was not involved in any deals there in any way, as is alleged.

Musharraf and his supporters claim my husband did it all for money. They allege we are supposed to have millions of dollars stashed away in bank accounts in Pakistan and abroad. To this day they have not come up with a single sheet of evidence to support their claims. Not even our tax returns have been questioned.

We know who truly profited from the business with Libya and North Korea, and the government and Army also know. At this point, we are not willing to divulge any names. That would be taking too much of a risk.

Of course, ideally, no country should have the bomb. However, until such a time as there is a fair deal between the "haves" and the "have nots," and as long as the "haves" go on building up larger arsenals of weapons and continue further research, the "have nots" will not feel safe. They know full well that, when push comes to shove, they will only have themselves to depend on no matter how many treaties they may have with other countries. Politics is a dirty game.

So why is the world so afraid of the Pakistani bomb? And why is it even called the "Islamic Bomb"? Was the American one a "Christian Bomb"? The Israeli a "Jewish Bomb"? Was the Chinese a "Buddhist" or "Atheist" bomb? Was the Indian one a "Hindu Bomb"? Right from the time it first became known that Pakistan had a nuclear program, the whole Western world, with America and Britain at the forefront, were up in arms and did all they could to prevent our success. All sorts of media hype immediately started -- from accusations of stolen documents to spy stories of James Bond proportions.

In any case, the Pakistani security forces will do everything in their might to prevent the truth from ever coming out. Most of all, I fear they will keep my husband under these conditions until the day he dies. That all of those people who suffered in one way or another for the sake of the project and gave their best will be remembered with a stigma attached to their name.

Spiegel Online

[arun]

Sameday and one more article from Spiegel :

08/11/2008 05:25 PM

A BOMB WITH MANY FATHERS

Is A.Q. Khan a 'Patriot' or the 'Godfather of Proliferation'?

By Erich Follath and Susanne Koelbl

Pakistani President Musharraf put him under house arrest for his nuclear weapons deals. Ex-CIA chief Tenet described him as being "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden." Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadir Khan is under a gag order, but in SPIEGEL, his wife accuses the government of calling the shots.

The villa, built on a hill covered with lush vegetation and well removed from the hectic life in the capital, could be an idyllic place. Monkeys play in the garden, and the air-conditioned rooms are filled with comfortable rattan furniture. But the people living there perceive it as a prison. The authorities have installed cameras in each of the rooms and at the entrance. Armed men guard the residents around the clock. Men on motorcycles patrol the grounds and 50 police officers and intelligence agents are assigned to the villa.

It's called "preventive protection." Whether the master of the house and his family are being protected from the public or the public from them remains unclear. They have been under de facto house arrest for four-and-a-half years. But now something sensational has happened.

The villa is the home of Abdul Qadir Khan, 72, who lives there with his wife and a granddaughter. Khan is the man former CIA Director George Tenet once called "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden." He is the man his enemies call "Dr. Strangelove," an allusion to the Stanley Kubrick film "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," in which insane US officers trigger a nuclear war. He is also the man considered the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program -- a man considered proven of having committed the crime of having dealt in nuclear components and blueprints on the international black market, with such dubious countries as North Korea, Iran and Libya.

Khan also had contacts in Saudi Arabia. In fact, that country's defense minister even visited his research laboratory in Kahuta once. And, according to Western intelligence agencies, the al-Qaida terrorist organization is believed to have approached Khan through middlemen. In a televised speech in February 2004 the scientist, once decorated with his country's highest honors, delivered a tearful public confession of wrongdoing. In a detailed report, the American foreign intelligence agency, the CIA, concluded that there was irrefutable evidence that Khan had brokered the delivery of gas ultra-centrifuges for enriching uranium, and even detailed instructions for a "nuclear starter kit," to the Libyan capital Tripoli. Some of the merchandise, shipped on board the German freighter "BBC China," was still packaged in plastic bags labeled "Good Looks Tailor, Islamabad." Washington issued an ultimatum to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who depended on billions in US military aid, to which Musharraf complied by forcing Khan to deliver his public confession.

The contrite Dr. Strangelove said that he had acted of his own accord and for profit reasons. Musharraf accepted the apology in person, on live television, shaking his head as if to underscore his disapproval. It was soon clear that a deal must have been struck: a mild sentence in return for Khan's agreement not to speak to the press or to United Nations nuclear experts.

Khan kept up his end of the bargain for four years, to the chagrin of the nuclear detectives at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, which received nothing more than the occasional written, and apparently censored, responses to its detailed questions. Even the Americans were unable to gain access to this dealer of death on the global black market. But a few weeks ago Khan, weakened by cancer surgery and apparently ready to clear the air, began giving telephone interviews to the domestic and international media. SPIEGEL also spoke with Khan in July. In some of these interviews, the godfather of proliferation said unequivocally that he had been pressured to deliver his 2004 confession, and in doing so had protected other players.

By that point, Musharraf had apparently realized that the situation was about to spin out of control. It is unclear whether he was simply lucky or, despite the new, democratic government, which has been trying to put him out to pasture, still wields sufficient power. In any event, he found a judge on the Islamabad High Court who issued a ruling in his favor on July 21. Khan's attorney had petitioned to have his client's house arrest lifted, but now the pendulum appeared to be swinging back in the other direction instead. Judge Sardar Aslam reinforced the restrictions and stressed that Khan is barred from "saying anything about the nuclear issue to any journalist," or even from discussing the topic with his friends.

Khan will not challenge the verdict. If he did, he would risk a prison term and would probably lose contact, once and for all, with the few friends who are still permitted to see him, albeit by appointment only and under supervision.

But if President Musharraf, 65, believed that he could now close this embarrassing chapter, he was mistaken. Pakistan's "father of the nuclear bomb" found a new way to inform the world about his extremely disconcerting business deals. He permitted his wife, who was apparently familiar with the details of his nuclear secrets, to publicize Khan's version of the story through SPIEGEL, in the form of a dossier she handed over to the magazine.

Hendrina Khan, known as Henny, 66, was born in South Africa, raised by Dutch parents in Rhodesia and married the Pakistani scientist in The Hague in 1964. She moved around Europe with him, from West Berlin, where he attended the city's Technical University under a scholarship for highly gifted students, to the Dutch city of Delft and then to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, where he obtained a Ph.D. degree in metallurgical engineering in 1972.

It soon became clear that the interests of the young Pakistani were focused on nuclear technology, and he went to work in the Dutch city of Almelo, where the firm URENCO was building a state-of-the-art uranium enrichment facility. He managed to enter the sanctum of nuclear energy literally overnight, gaining access to the source of nuclear engineering of which every aspiring bomb-builder dreams. Security restrictions were extremely lax, and Khan spent many an evening making countless photocopies -- until, one day, he sensed that he had been found out. According to witness testimony, after hastily leaving for Pakistan in late 1975, Khan had his wife Henny, who had already given birth to two daughters by then, collected blueprints he had secretly made of the novel Dutch centrifuge technology. In 1983, a Dutch court convicted him to four years in prison in absentia for industrial espionage.

Khan, who had apparently already joined the Pakistani intelligence agency in Europe and had already attracted the CIA's attention, stood to benefit greatly from the copied know-how. He was convinced that Pakistan needed a counterweight to its archenemy, India. Khan, a self-professed "deeply devout Muslim and Pakistani patriot," saw himself as something of an atomic Robin Hood. He wanted to provide his backward country with nuclear weapons and, later on, to pass the technology on to other underprivileged nations, especially in the Islamic world.

Khan found an enthusiastic champion in then-President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Pakistani people would "eat grass if necessary" to acquire the bomb, Bhutto said, and he set up a research laboratory for the gifted scientist in Kahuta, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the capital. In May 1998, only a few weeks after India's successful nuclear tests, Pakistan successfully detonated its own bomb, a triumph that earned "Dr. Strangelove" the country's highest decorations and made him a national hero.

In her dossier, Hendrina Khan denies that her husband made millions with his black market deals and used the money to buy expensive real estate in Islamabad, Dubai, London and Timbuktu, as the Pakistani government has claimed. She also denies that there was an Iranian connection, which Western experts believe is certain, and admits to only two North Korea trips, whereas insiders have counted no fewer than 12. As clearly and understandably partisan as the scientist's wife is, and as rosy the picture she seeks to paint of him and his endeavors is, this does not detract from the credibility of her central accusation that her husband only ever "executed the instructions he was given" by the government.

"The Greatest Threat to Mankind"

President Musharraf, who controlled everything and everyone (after coming to power in a military coup in October 1999, he became president and continues to hold this office today, only resigning from his post as commander-in-chief of the military in November 2007), is likely to have sanctioned, perhaps even ordered, deals with North Korea and Iran. He apparently deceived his Western allies. Even though Pakistan did not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Musharraf once said that Pakistan had to "prove to the world that we are a responsible nation and do not permit the spreading of nuclear weapons." Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei and US President George W. Bush agree that proliferation is the "greatest threat to mankind."

The news could hardly come at a less favorable time for Pakistan ("The Land of the Pure"), a country of 152 million people. The Islamic Republic, flanked by crisis-torn Afghanistan and its eternal rival India, faces international criticism as a hotbed of Islamist violence. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently accused Pakistan of often being a "starting point for terrorism in Afghanistan." US presidential candidate Barack Obama has said that he would launch military strikes without consulting with the regime in Islamabad if he had precise information about the whereabouts of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.

Even the Bush administration, long soft on Musharraf, is now taking a tougher approach. In early July, it sent CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes to Islamabad, where he presented the Pakistani government with evidence of cooperation between the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, and Islamists in Afghanistan. Both US experts and their Indian counterparts are convinced that ISI agents were involved in the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, in which 54 people died. Taped conversations even allegedly prove that they acted with the approval of their superiors. "Pakistan's Army leadership and the Pakistani establishment" organized the insurgency, Kabul's intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, told SPIEGEL last week.

Pakistan is on the edge of an abyss, as reports from the last 30 days indicate. In Swat, the former tourist paradise only 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the capital, fanatics burned down 21 girls' schools and the country's only ski resort. In Waziristan, the tribal area where the central government has almost no say anymore, terrorist leader Baitullah Mehsud had 22 envoys from the capital killed when they came to the region to negotiate a ceasefire on behalf of the government. Dozens of new al-Qaida training camps in the border region represent "a direct and serious threat to Afghanistan, as well as to the entire West," says CIA Director Michael Hayden.

The Pakistani economy is also in disarray. In Multan, as in other major cities, there have been spontaneous and bloody riots in response to hours-long power outages at temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), as well as to a roughly 20-percent rise in the price of gasoline and staple foods in only one month. Foreign investors are pulling out and the stock market is plummeting.

The hopes that had been pinned on Pakistan's new civilian government, which came to power less than half a year ago in relatively free and fair elections, have almost disappeared. The coalition between the Pakistani Peoples' Party and the Muslim League, bitter foes for years, seems paralyzed. The intelligence agency remains a state within a state, while the army is ultimately in control. When Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani proudly proclaimed, in late July, that he had placed the ISI under the supervision of the Interior Ministry, military leaders dismissed his statements within hours. Ashfaq Kayani, 56, the new army chief, whom Washington values greatly, is seen as Pakistan's new strong man.

The coalition parties agree on one thing: their aversion to the president. Musharraf can expect to face impeachment proceedings soon for abuse of power, after the governing parties agreed last Thursday to introduce them. Musharraf even had to cancel his trip to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games there. The 60 insubordinate judges the president fired during the national state of emergency he imposed last November are to be reinstated soon -- a development that a large majority of Pakistanis will welcome. But whether the parties will manage to scrape together the two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament needed for an impeachment remains questionable.

The entire country is abuzz with rumors. Is Musharraf fighting back? Will he dissolve the parliament? Or will he even attempt another coup, even though, in recent opinion polls, 83 percent of Pakistanis want to see him retire and Musharraf himself said in a SPIEGEL interview in mid-January that he would resign "on the day I am convinced that the majority of the people no longer want me?" Or will he go in to exile in Turkey?

It cannot be ruled out that a dossier from Islamabad will be the political nail in his coffin, a document written by a woman who fears for the life of her husband, one of the fathers of the Pakistani bomb.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Spiegel Online

[kshirin]

I was checking endnotes to “Deception…” by Adrian Levy Catherine Scott Clark at:
http://www.clarkandlevy.com/
Boy do they have a wealth of original material on China, US lies on Pak N programme and Israeli attempts to unamsk it mind blowing.
And found also panel of links which mentions : http://www.pakdef.info/forum/
Does anyone know if it is any good? Looks like a rip off of BR.

[Gerard]

That is the infamous "pakdeaf" or "deaf and dumb forum".
It was verboten to link it to BRF.

[kshirin]

OK thanks for that info.
Does anyone have Kuldip Nayar's original interview with AQ Khan in which the guy ranted about the bomb? I cant believe the US continued to cover up after that.

[arun]

X Post.

Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress have released this years “Terrorism Index”.

Pakistan naturally has an appropriately titled section all to itself :

The Breeding Ground

Also recommended for reading is the survey result of “experts” which naturally is peppered with references to Pakistan.

One from among the many references to Pakistan and relevant to this thread :

Pakistan is rated as the country most likely to transfer nuclear technology to terrorists (Q10).

In Q10 do note mention of India .

See here for the survey of “experts” results :

Survey Results


The opening page for viewing the report in its entirety is here:

Terrorism Index

[Gerard]

Pakistan’s Dr Nuke bids for the presidency

Pakistani leaders encouraged rivalry between the teams trying to make highly enriched uranium and the other nuclear explosive, plutonium. Khan’s team won. His team was also the recipient of a gift from China of a design for an atomic bomb and enough highly enriched uranium for two devices, after Beijing decided to back Khan to jump-start Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. I remember being told about China’s nuclear generosity by an outraged British official in the 1980s. I later asked what Beijing had received in return. It was an enrichment plant.

The plant is at Hanzhong in central China. C-130 Hercules transports of the Pakistan air force made more than 100 flights to China carrying centrifuge equipment. Beijing needed the plant, not for bombs but to fuel its nuclear power plants. Centrifuge technology is good for both levels of enrichment, hence the current concern that Iran’s nascent plant at Natanz has a military purpose. China could not make the Pakistan-supplied centrifuges work properly, so replaced them with Russian centrifuges. What happened to the Pakistani centrifuges? A good question. They were not returned to Pakistan. Could they have ended up in Iran?

[Gerard]

In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals

The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.

As recounted in books and articles and reports by nuclear experts, Mr. Tinner worked with Dr. Khan for three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. His expertise in vacuum technology aided Dr. Khan’s development of atomic centrifuges, which produced fuel for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now variously estimated at 50 to 100 warheads. Yet while Mr. Tinner repeatedly drew the attention of European authorities, who questioned the export of potentially dangerous technology, he never faced charges. Mr. Tinner’s involvement with Dr. Khan deepened beginning in the late 1990s, when, joined by his sons, he helped supply centrifuges for Libya’s secret bomb program.

[arun]

The IAEA has released a “restricted” report on Libya's attempt to get nuclear weapons which Associated Press and separately Deutsche Presse-Agentur have gotten hold of.

Pakistan is naturally found to be neck deep in proliferating to Libya.

From AP via IHT :

IAEA: Black market nuke network had top-notch info

The Associated Press
Friday, September 12, 2008

VIENNA, Austria: The black market network supplying Iran, North Korea and Libya with illicit nuclear technology had substantial and sensitive information on how to make atomic arms, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

The agency, in a restricted report made available to The Associated Press, also said much of the network's material was passed on to customers in electronic form — giving a potentially unlimited number of clients access, whether they were governments or individuals.

The IAEA's information was contained in a report on Libya and based on investigations conducted since that country renounced its efforts to make nuclear weapons in 2003. The report was made available to the AP shortly after it was posted on the agency's internal web site for perusal by the IAEA's 35-nation board.

While Libya is no longer a proliferation concern, the report's revelations on the network headed by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan are important because he also supplied Iran and North Korea with nuclear know-how and hardware and could therefore help in investigations of those countries' programs.

Diplomats linked to the IAEA said the Libya investigation also revealed that the network had peddled more sophisticated information linked to making nuclear weapons than the agency had previously known. They demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the report.

North Korea went on to develop nuclear weapons but agreed to mothball its program last year before the disarmament process hit a recent snag over a dispute about verification of its atomic activities.

Iran has acknowledged buying from the Khan network but insists its nuclear programs are meant only to generate power — an assertion disputed by the United States and its allies, which insist Tehran wants to make the bomb.

Despite three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions, the Islamic Republic continues to expand its uranium enrichment program, which originated with purchases from the Khan ring and is able to create the material both for nuclear fuel and the fissile core of warheads.
The Libya report was prepared for a meeting of the IAEA board later this month where the main focus will be on Iran's nuclear defiance. A separate restricted report on Iran is expected to be posted on the IAEA web site early next week.

As expected, the 12-page Libya report gave the country a clean slate.

"The agency has concluded that Libya's current capabilities are not suited for the design or manufacturing of nuclear weapons components," it said. "Nor has the agency found any indications of work related to nuclear weapons development."

But the agency's investigations "indicate that a substantial amount of sensitive information related to the fabrication of a nuclear weapon was available to members of the network" — including a document on how to cast uranium metal into warheads "that was more up to date than ... a related document found in Iran."

Countries insisting that Iran's nuclear activities are a cover for weapons ambitions have pointed to that document in buttressing their case. Tehran says it never asked for the blueprint but found it among a stack of other papers it purchased.

Having such sensitive nuclear material in electronic form is clearly "a matter of serious concern to the Agency," the report said.

A senior diplomat told the AP earlier this year the IAEA knew of the existence of a sophisticated nuclear weapons design being peddled electronically by the black-market ring as far back as 2005. The diplomat, who is familiar with the investigations into the Khan network, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.

The Libya report also indicated that contacts to the Khan network go back further than previously thought — to about the time Iran had its first meeting with the same nuclear peddlers.

It noted that senior Libyan government officials met with Khan as far back as 1984. Then, after an 11-year hiatus, Libya re-established contacts in 1995 as it started building its secret nuclear program.

Unlike Iran, Libya never activated its nuclear program, but amassed tons of the material used as the feedstock for uranium enrichment as well as hundreds of centrifuges and related components needed to enrich.

At the time Libya went public, it had orders for 10,000 more centrifuges as well as drawings of a nuclear warhead acquired through the black market network.

LINK

From DPA via Monsters & Critics :

Libya had blueprint for making 10 kg of plutonium a year (1st Lead)

By DPA
Sep 12, 2008, 11:19 GMT

Vienna - Before stopping its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, Libya obtained more sensitive technical information than was previously known, a confidential report by the UN nuclear agency shows.

According to the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was obtained by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, Libya had acquired design information for a nuclear reprocessing plant capable of making 10 kilogrammes of plutonium per year.

The nuclear bomb that the United States dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 contained 6.1 kilogrammes of plutonium.

The Libyan plant was 'based on German origin technology,' the IAEA document said.
The report, which was sent to IAEA board members on Friday, noted, however, that agency inspectors had not found any facilities related to the blueprints, and that some key technical information was missing from the documents.

Through a smuggling network set up by Pakistani government scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, Libya obtained technology and information related to many aspects of nuclear-weapons-building, including a blueprint for a nuclear warhead.

However, 'the Agency did not find any indications of actual work related to nuclear weapons development,' the IAEA said.

The report revealed that Khan's relations to the north African country started already in 1984, around 10 years earlier than previously assumed.

Chemical analysis of uranium particles found in Libya has proved that equipment for uranium enrichment had been provided by or through Pakistan, the report shows.

The summary report by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei concludes that there are no outstanding issues in the UN nuclear watchdog's investigation of Tripoli's weapons programme.

Therefore, the agency would 'continue to implement safeguards in Libya as a routine matter' from now on, ElBaradei wrote.

In an apparent nod to Iran's hesitant cooperation with the IAEA in clearing up its nuclear history, the report noted that 'Libya has also provided the Agency unrestricted and prompt access,' beyond the requirements of its inspection agreements with the UN nuclear agency.

LINK

[ramana]

Something odd. If the Libiyans were given Pu technology then they also got Pu based weapon technology. Pu technology needs to be proofed. Most likely the Chagai test # 2 was given. The PRC design is based on HEU and not Pu.

[Philip]

Ironic,how the US is trying to curb and cap our N-capability through the N-deal addenda,while Pak was allowed to proliferate at will!

Here's a report on "Pak's bomb factory" that can churn out upto about 50+ bombs a year.
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1134/pak-bomb-factory

Pak Bomb Factory
posted Thursday July 27, 2006 under india by jeffrey


David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) released commercially available satellite images of a new Pakistani plutonium production reactor under construction.

(Here is a GoogleEarth placemark.)

This is really great work. Precisely the kind of open source analysis that I admire. The revelation made the front page of the Washington Post (Joby Warrick, “Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Program Plant Underway Could Generate Plutonium for 40 to 50 Bombs a Year, Analysts Say,” Washington Post, July 24, 2006, A1).

There is just one thing—I spent a few days trying to redo the calculation. I don’t think the satellite images provide enough data to do it.

I think they had some help.

***

Albright and Brannan claim the new plant would be capable of operating “in excess of 1,000 megawatts-thermal.”

I asked around and, apparently, the core power density (thermal megawatts per cubic meter) is roughly constant for a given type of reactor (e.g., PWR, BWR, HWR, GCR, etc.).

Given a constant core power density (say my friends) the new reactor vessel would be not quite three times as large as the current one. (50 MWth x 27, or 33, equals 1400).

A 1400 MWth reactor is capable of producing about 1.4 kg of plutonium a day, or 500 kg of Pu a year, or 60 bombs a year. So, the reactor has to be a wee bit smaller. And, yes, Virginia, there is a lot of rounding in that calculation.

Yet, to estimate that the new reactor is almost three times as large, one would need the volume of both the old and new reactor vessels. Yet the satellite image contains only the diameter of the new vessel—one has to assume that the length is proportional to the diameter.

The real question is: where did ISIS get the volume of the existing reactor vessel, shrouded in a containment dome?

I haven’t seen specifications for the Khushab reactor floating around? Have you, dear readers? If one could get the volume of the existing reactor vessel, then one can do the calculation, roughly.

Assuming they are the same reactor design.

***

One motive for someone inside to help ISIS is clear: The Administration is pushing the US-India nuclear deal through Congress. Not surprisingly, Joby Warrick at the Washington Post reports, the Administration decided not to share the intelligence with Congress, intelligence which might have undermined the deal.

So, what better way to stick it to the deal than point out the Administration has been hiding a gi-normous bomb factory under construction in Pakistan?


Comment
A guess…

The fuel rods hang vertically, water flow is therefore also vertical for low drag. Holding the operating temperature and pressure the same, the amount of heat that the water can take up is also the same. Therefore, height shouldn’t scale. Keep in mind as well that neutron economy changes due to water density changes at temperature.

It seems like in practice, there would be an optimization that would space the rods slightly farther while also making the vessel taller, but not quite proportionately. A bigger reactor should have less surface area neutron loss and this could compensate for slightly larger rod spacing providing space for more water. So, I might suggest a power law scaling(less than 1) in height versus diameter.

So, I think someone ‘skilled in the art’ of weapons grade plutonium production probably could estimate from the satellite image. Don’t know if that was done by Albright or others.
— John Field · Jul 27, 05:56 PM ·

Let us see. If it is a secret project without safeguards, Pakistan is more likely to build a heavy water reactor. Because there is a lot of experience with that type. Also, indigenous production of heavy water and natural uranium point to it. There is no need for complex calculation of power density, heat transfer etc to determine the reactor type or size.
A typical 250 MW electrical reactor would have about 900 MW thermal capacity. But, it is a reactor with fuel placed horizontally. It does not hang vertically as some think. The calandria or reactor vessel is a cylinder of about 5 m dia. But, it lies on its side, not on its end. Viewed from above it would appear as a rectangle, not as a circle. How then was the diameter estimated?
— Lakshmi Krishnan · Jul 27, 11:59 PM ·

Regarding your last point on why an Administration insider would provide this information to ISIS, it is no secret that the nonproliferation bureaucracy at State is aghast at the India deal. Perfectly plausible that one of these experts, perhaps the same “experts” referenced in the Warrick article, was the source of information for the ISIS report. Albright in particular has a very strong reputation within the community.
— J · Jul 28, 06:25 AM ·

This being so and other nations (Iran, NK) likely to get and grow their nuclear arsenals, what sense does it make to move operations out of NORADs current locale into “the open”? We ought to be carving out more mountain fortresses, not shuttering them.
— John · Jul 28, 12:55 PM ·

why did this revelation come as a surprise to everyone? was there some agreement in the US intelligence community unil now that Pakistan is NOT building up its weapons capabilities? Or that its policies had changed for the better since 1998 (way back before the deal was even a glimmer in the eyes of the Bushies)?
— s. gulika · Jul 28, 01:36 PM ·

Commenting is closed for this article.

<<--Department of Wankery | ACW Home | Nukes: Betcha

PS:I take it that this establishment is NOT the latest secret site that AWST featured in a recent issue.

[ShauryaT]

Not only TSP is getting this swanky new PU spewing plant, understand what that means. They have BF weapons now.

[ShauryaT]

Are there any reports indicating that China, knew about the proliferation activities of TSP?

[Lalmohan]

Something odd. If the Libiyans were given Pu technology then they also got Pu based weapon technology. Pu technology needs to be proofed. Most likely the Chagai test # 2 was given. The PRC design is based on HEU and not Pu.

i think (from Correa's book and elsewhere) that the Libyans were given almost everything literally copy-pasted from the AQ 'hard drive'. its either gross incompetence from the subordinates or genuine 'open source' proliferation - both options are equally scary. the libyans came very clean about the whole thing, even after the western intel agencies missed some of the goodies that were on the ship they intercepted. I think part of the libyan problem was that they lacked sufficient scientific resources to decipher all of the materials they were sent, and gaddafi probably figured out that he'd been sold something he couldn't actually do much with, and with the changing tide of jehad he suddenly had a few chips to bargain with.

Did China know? I think they did. If they really didn't want any of their IP to wander around, they would have come down hard on their taller than ocean chamcha, note Lalmasjid tamasha following Chinese engineer/sex worker episode. It suits the Chinese to have anti-american regimes get all excited about secret weapons, they probably assumed that they wouldn't be able to do anything with the blue prints anyway. They probably learnt a lot from watching the pukes make a hash of it. Lends more credence to the puke bums being taken out of PLA stocks and painted (as per standard operating procedure).

readers from new zealand may like to point this out to their sanctimonious perfectly anti-nuclear government

[arun]

Is it halal for an Islamic Republic to bar a Muslim from offering prayers in the nearby mosque ? :

Dr Khan tells Islamabad HC - "Musharraf told me to confess to N-proliferation role"

Karachi News.Net
Friday 17th October, 2008 (ANI)

Islamabad, Oct 17 : Disgraced Pakistan nuclear scientist Dr AQ Khan has told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that the former president Pervez Musharaf had "persuaded" him to make the "confession" about his role in nuclear proliferation in the name of "national interest", and on the promise that they would keep him a "free man and a national hero".

Chief Justice IHC Sardar Mohammad Aslam, who had taken up a petition of Barrister M. Javed Iqbal Jafree, seeking review or recall its July 21 verdict reserved the judgment on its maintainability, but directed the country's Deputy Attorney General Amjad Iqbal Qureshi to submit in two days relevant cases to help decide the possibility of allowing the petition on habeas corpus matters, reported the Dawn.

In the petition, Barrister Jafree had requested the Court to review its decision of barring the scientist from speaking on the nuclear proliferation issue, but allowing him to meet relatives and travel inside the country after security clearance.

Dr Khan, in his handwritten letter in Urdu dated September 21, had alleged that the confession he had read out on the TV was given to him by the SPD (Strategic Planning Division), and that despite the promise that he would be a free man after four months he was still under house arrest.

The letter, however, did not mention what kind of "persuasion" allegedly by Musharraf compelled Dr Khan to appear before the TV and accept the wrong doings.

Dr Khan had confessed on television to having transferred nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, but pardoned by President Musharraf though he was placed under house arrest.

In a separate letter, Dr Khan had requested the Court to review its earlier judgment which had virtually put him under house arrest for life with no rights or facilities.

Dr Khan alleged that the Court had mistakenly mentioned the Pakistan Science Foundation with which he has nothing to do. "I want to regularly visit Pakistan Academy of Sciences of which I was President for six years," he said in the letter.

Barrister Jafree also told the court that Dr Khan was living on his "meager resources" and sacrificed everything for the country, but the concerned authorities had "violated the orders of this Court".

Dr Khan was even barred from offering prayers in the nearby mosque, which he had built, the counsel said and requested the court that his client wanted to appear before it in person to witness the proceedings provided the government provided security though he believed he did not have any security concerns.

LINK

[arun]

Nuclear scientist blasts HEC’s outgoing chairman

Friday, October 17, 2008
By By Rauf Klasra

ISLAMABAD: The detained nuclear scientist, Dr AQ Khan, has in a dramatic move made public a long charge-sheet against the outgoing chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr Attaur Rehman, saying he was the blue-eyed boy of Gen Pervez Musharraf because both hailed from Delhi.

In a note sent to The News on Thursday, Dr Khan regretted that despite eight years in office and spending billions of taxpayers’ money, Dr Attaur Rehman could not even set up a single university, leave alone his tall claims of setting up six foreign universities.

Dr Khan, breaking his silence after a very long time, also made some new revelations, saying Gen Musharraf wanted him to become a minister but he proposed the name of Dr Attaur Rehman. He has also claimed that Pakistan had made the nuclear bomb in 1984.

In his attack on Dr Rehman, the first of its kind which might put the tall claims of the HEC in a new perspective, Dr AQ Khan said: “As an organic chemist with no industrial exposure, he fell into the trap laid by many of the incompetent sycophants that surrounded him. They excelled in on-screen, colourful presentations containing figures, graphs and forecasts, but these were nothing more than a house of cards. Those running the HEC had never set up or run even a high school, let alone a university.”

Ms Henny Khan, the wife of Dr AQ Khan, on behalf of her husband, also sent a long note to this correspondent to join the debate going on about the performance of Dr Attaur Rehman, who was one of the longest-serving persons during the last eight years of Musharraf but failed to deliver.

Dr Khan is the second top man who has blasted Dr Rehman after former minister Ishaq Khan Khakwani.

In his communication to The News, Dr Khan said the article on the Higher Education Commission in The News of Oct 14, 2008, together with the criticism on its performance by former federal minister Ishaq Khan Khakwani and Dr Attaur Rehman’s reaction were highly informative to the common man in general and the academic community in particular.

“The truth always hurts and Khakwani is known for calling a spade a spade. He was also very outspoken in his criticism of Gen (retd) Musharraf’s illegal and unconstitutional acts. On both counts, he has hit the nail right on the head,” Dr Khan said.

He said he had known Prof Dr Attaur Rehman for almost two decades and was aware of his good work at the HEJ Institute at the University of Karachi. He recalled that after Gen (retd) Musharraf staged the coup against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Dr Rehman became Musharraf’s blue-eyed boy, presumably because both came from Delhi.

He revealed: “When I was about to retire, Gen (retd) Musharraf offered me the post of minister of science and technology, which I refused. I had good reasons for doing so. I did not want to be part of the Gen’s cabinet, to see him in cabinet meetings and to shake hands with him as if all was well between us. At their specific request, I suggested Prof Attaur Rehman believing that, as a foreign trained, good academic, he was capable of doing the job. After my retirement, Gen (retd) Musharraf asked me to become his adviser, which I again refused. However, a number of senior Army officers requested me to accept this post for my own good as the general was known to be very vindictive. As adviser, I could keep myself busy with educational activities. I accepted the post on the condition that I would not be required to attend cabinet meetings.”

Dr Khan said after his appointment as minister, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman changed and was no longer the humble person he used to be. None of the advisers (with the status of a federal minister) i.e. Mr Sharifuddin Pirzada, Dr Ishfaq Ahmad and myself ever put a flag on their car or put “federal minister” on their car number plates. On becoming adviser and later the HEC chairman, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman constantly used the term “federal minister”, even adding it on his HEC letterhead. It was a pity he felt the need to do so, as with his educational and professional background, there was no need to do so. His academic achievements said it all.

Coming back to the achievements or lack thereof of the HEC, Dr AQ Khan said billions of rupees were spent over the last eight years with very little to show for it. “Prof Dr Attaur Rehman met me a number of times, the last time being hardly three or four weeks ago. We discussed the establishment of six technical universities with the help of six foreign countries. I was rather shocked to learn from him that all these universities were to be set up by the HEC — all the infrastructure, equipment, faculty, salaries, transport, residential facilities, etc., were to be provided by Pakistan. The foreign universities’ role would be solely to nominate the foreign faculty, advise and issue degrees. I was always under the impression that such universities were to be financed and run by the respective foreign countries. Since Prof Dr Attaur Rehman became the HEC chairman, I have always been advising him to first set up one university and only attempt a second one when the first was up and running smoothly but, as an outsider, my suggestions were not welcomed. We now see the results — hardly anything worth mentioning.”

Dr Khan said another issue that sidetracked the academic one and with serious financial repercussions was the mobile phone publicity campaign. Prof Dr Attaur Rehman, as minister for information technology, went all-out to introduce the mobile phone culture. We all saw on TV how every Tom, Dick and Harry was using a mobile phone, but nobody thought of the financial repercussions.

“In the very first year of its introduction, Pakistan spent $1 billion (one billion dollars) on the import of mobile phones, not even to talk of the remittances back to their parent companies of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. A manufacturing plant, costing a fraction of that amount, could have produced phone locally; thus, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and providing jobs to many local engineers and technicians. If we were able to produce state-of-the-art centrifuges, high frequency inverters, top quality nuclear valves, ballistic-guided missiles and nuclear weapons, why were we not able to produce mobile phones?

Dr Khan said he had no doubt that Prof Dr Attaur Rehman’s intentions were good. However, he pointed out that his planning proved disastrous. “His weakness was that he was not an engineer and, therefore, lacked a basic understanding of the requirements of technical education. As an organic chemist with no industrial exposure, he fell into the trap laid by many of the incompetent sycophants that surrounded him. They excelled in on-screen, colourful presentations containing figures, graphs and forecasts, but these were nothing more than a house of cards”.

AQ Khan said those running the HEC had never set up or run even a high school, let alone a university. “If Dr Attaur Rehman had listened to my well-meant advice and set up even a single university, he would not be facing such scathing attacks today. Such a university would have seen hundreds of good engineers graduating by now.”

Dr Khan said he always gave Dr Attaur Rehman the example of the GIK Institute. Ghulam Ishaq Khan made him (AQ Khan) project director and he had the unflinching support of Ghulam Ishaq Khan himself, HU Beg, Shamsul Haq, Brig Amir Gulistan Janjua and Elahi Bux Soomro.

“Together, we put up the GIK Technical Institute in two years at a cost of approximately Rs1-1/2 billion. Within two years of its inauguration, it was listed as one of the top ten technical institutions of Asia. Incidentally, my former teacher at Delft (Holland) and Leuven (Belgium), Prof Dr MJ Brabers, was the first rector and there were 15 foreign professors when the institute started functioning.”

Dr Khan said another example of concentrating on one thing at a time was the establishment of the uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta. “We started with literally nothing in 1976 and by August 1984 we had put up one of the most advanced facilities and had even managed to produce nuclear weapons. All this was done with a budget of Rs 100 to 110 million per year.”

He pointed out that Prof Dr Attaur Rehman had visited the plant and was, therefore, in a position to judge himself whether his advice had been genuine and workable.

“Our success was due to putting together of a very strong technical team. We were lucky to have had the full support — both financially and morally — of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Gen Ziaul Haq, Ghulam Ishaq Khan and others. HU Beg was a great supporter to us and looked after our financial requirements with great acumen, ensuring strict control and regular audits,” Dr Khan said.

Dr Khan said it was a great pity that despite his sincere efforts, good intentions and access to funds, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman was not able to deliver what he set out to do. He believed that not a single new university was established or an existing one brought to a level where it could be counted as one of the 200 top-most universities recently mentioned in Time magazine, while India has two mentions on that list. “This is mainly due to his inability to select a competent team of technically experienced advisers. Academicians never make good administrators and planners,” he regretted.

Note: Dr Attaur Rehman has the right to reply and give his full version which will be accommodated in these columns. —Editor

The News

[Gerard]

Pakistan Nuclear Scientist Obtained Parts in Japan, Kyodo Says

Khan obtained ``several important parts'' from Japanese companies while visiting Japan in 1984, he told Kyodo. Pakistan is believed to have succeeded in producing enriched uranium in 1985, Kyodo said, without citing the source of its information. Khan also bought equipment that ensures a steady supply of energy to enrichment facilities on a visit in 1977, Kyodo said.

[enqyoob]

I am spamming this all over, no apologies. ACT!
OK, folks, please propagate this one far and wide. It hits the right spots.


Please Don’t Use My Tax Dollars To Fund Terrorism
http://www.petitiononline.com/NoPak/petition.html

SIMPLE MESSAGE: STOP FUNDING PAKISTANI TERRORISM: THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN, OR THAT OF SOMEONE YOU LOVE!

[ShauryaT]

Hidden Travels of the Atomic Bomb

In 1945, after the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities, J. Robert Oppenheimer expressed foreboding about the spread of nuclear arms.

‘The Bomb,’ Harper Collins

A Trident D5 misssile shortly after launch from a submerged ballistic missile submarine.

“They are not too hard to make,” he told his colleagues on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M. “They will be universal if people wish to make them universal.”

That sensibility, born where the atomic bomb itself was born, grew into a theory of technological inevitability. Because the laws of physics are universal, the theory went, it was just a matter of time before other bright minds and determined states joined the club. A corollary was that trying to stop proliferation was quite difficult if not futile.

But nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth. In the six decades since Oppenheimer’s warning, the nuclear club has grown to only nine members. What accounts for the slow spread? Can anything be done to reduce it further? Is there a chance for an atomic future that is brighter than the one Oppenheimer foresaw?

Two new books by three atomic insiders hold out hope. The authors shatter myths, throw light on the hidden dynamics of nuclear proliferation and suggest new ways to reduce the threat.

Neither book endorses Oppenheimer’s view that bombs are relatively easy to make. Both document national paths to acquiring nuclear weapons that have been rocky and dependent on the willingness of spies and politicians to divulge state secrets.

Thomas C. Reed, a veteran of the Livermore weapons laboratory in California and a former secretary of the Air Force, and Danny B. Stillman, former director of intelligence at Los Alamos, have teamed up in “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation” to show the importance of moles, scientists with divided loyalties and — most important — the subtle and not so subtle interests of nuclear states.

“Since the birth of the nuclear age,” they write, “no nation has developed a nuclear weapon on its own, although many claim otherwise.”

Among other things, the book details how secretive aid from France and China helped spawn five more nuclear states.

It also names many conflicted scientists, including luminaries like Isidor I. Rabi. The Nobel laureate worked on the Manhattan Project in World War II and later sat on the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science, a birthplace of Israel’s nuclear arms.

Secret cooperation extended to the secluded sites where nations tested their handiwork in thundering blasts. The book says, for instance, that China opened its sprawling desert test site to Pakistan, letting its client test a first bomb there on May 26, 1990.There are many such dates out there, another one places it in 1984, which is the true one?

That alone rewrites atomic history. It casts new light on the reign of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister of Pakistan and helps explain how the country was able to respond so quickly in May 1998 when India conducted five nuclear tests.

“It took only two weeks and three days for the Pakistanis to field and fire a nuclear device of their own,” the book notes.

In another disclosure, the book says China “secretly extended the hospitality of the Lop Nur nuclear test site to the French.”

The authors build their narrative on deep knowledge of the arms and intelligence worlds, including those abroad. Mr. Stillman has toured heavily guarded nuclear sites in China and Russia, and both men have developed close ties with foreign peers.

In their acknowledgments, they thank American cold warriors like Edward Teller as well as two former C.I.A. directors, saying the intelligence experts “guided our searches.”

Robert S. Norris, an atomic historian and author of “Racing for the Bomb,” an account of the Manhattan Project, praised the book for “remarkable disclosures of how nuclear knowledge was shared overtly and covertly with friends and foes.”

The book is technical in places, as when detailing the exotica of nuclear arms. But it reads like a labor of love built on two lifetimes of scientific adventure. It is due out in January from Zenith Press.

Its wide perspective reveals how states quietly shared complex machinery and secrets with one another.

All paths stem from the United States, directly or indirectly. One began with Russian spies that deeply penetrated the Manhattan Project. Stalin was so enamored of the intelligence haul, Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman note, that his first atom bomb was an exact replica of the weapon the United States had dropped on Nagasaki.

Moscow freely shared its atomic thefts with Mao Zedong, China’s leader. The book says that Klaus Fuchs, a Soviet spy in the Manhattan Project who was eventually caught and, in 1959, released from jail, did likewise. Upon gaining his freedom, the authors say, Fuchs gave the mastermind of Mao’s weapons program a detailed tutorial on the Nagasaki bomb. A half-decade later, China surprised the world with its first blast.

The book, in a main disclosure, discusses how China in 1982 made a policy decision to flood the developing world with atomic know-how. Its identified clients include Algeria, Pakistan and North Korea.

Alarmingly, the authors say one of China’s bombs was created as an “export design” that nearly “anybody could build.” The blueprint for the simple plan has traveled from Pakistan to Libya and, the authors say, Iran. That path is widely assumed among intelligence officials, but Tehran has repeatedly denied the charge.

The book sees a quiet repercussion of China’s proliferation policy in the Algerian desert. Built in secrecy, the reactor there now makes enough plutonium each year to fuel one atom bomb and is ringed by antiaircraft missiles, the book says.

China’s deck also held a wild card: its aid to Pakistan helped A.Q. Khan, a rogue Pakistani metallurgist who sold nuclear gear on the global black market. The authors compare Dr. Khan to “a used-car dealer” happy to sell his complex machinery to suckers who had no idea how hard it was to make fuel for a bomb.

Why did Beijing spread its atomic knowledge so freely? The authors speculate that it either wanted to strengthen the enemies of China’s enemies (for instance, Pakistan as a counterweight to India) or, more chillingly, to encourage nuclear wars or terror in foreign lands from which Beijing would emerge as the “last man standing.” The surprising thing to me is all this happened not under the mad man Mao but the so called pragmatic Deng Xiao Ping. I am still amazed that PRC shared its nuclear techs with TSP, shows you how insecure they probably feel.

A lesser pathway involves France. The book says it drew on Manhattan Project veterans and shared intimate details of its bomb program with Israel, with whom it had substantial commercial ties. By 1959, the book says, dozens of Israeli scientists “were observing and participating in” the French program of weapons design.

The book adds that in early 1960, when France detonated its first bomb, doing so in the Algerian desert, “two nations went nuclear.” And it describes how the United States turned a blind eye to Israel’s own atomic developments. It adds that, in the autumn of 1966, Israel conducted a special, non-nuclear test “2,600 feet under the Negev desert.” The next year it built its first bomb.

Israel, in turn, shared its atomic secrets with South Africa. The book discloses that the two states exchanged some key ingredients for the making of atom bombs: tritium to South Africa, uranium to Israel. And the authors agree with military experts who hold that Israel and South Africa in 1979 jointly detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Island, more than one thousand miles south of Cape Town. Israel needed the test, it says, to develop a neutron bomb.

The authors charge that South Africa at one point targeted Luanda, the capital of neighboring Angola, “for a nuclear strike if peace talks failed.”

South Africa dismantled six nuclear arms in 1990 but retains much expertise. Today, the authors write, “South African technical mercenaries may be more dangerous than the underemployed scientists of the former Soviet Union” because they have no real home in Africa.

“The Bomb: A New History,” due out in January from Ecco Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, plows similar ground less deeply, but looks more widely at proliferation curbs and diplomacy. It is by Stephen M. Younger, the former head of nuclear arms at Los Alamos and former director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon.

Dr. Younger disparages what he calls myths suggesting that “all the secrets of nuclear weapons design are available on the Internet.” He writes that France, despite secretive aid, struggled initially to make crude bombs — a point he saw with his own eyes during a tour of a secretive French atomic museum that is closed to the public. That trouble, he says, “suggests we should doubt assertions that the information required to make a nuclear weapon is freely available.”

The two books draw on atomic history to suggest a mix of old and new ways to defuse the proliferation threat. Both see past restraints as fraying and the task as increasingly urgent.

Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman see politics — not spies or military ambitions — as the primary force in the development and spread of nuclear arms. States repeatedly stole and leaked secrets because they saw such action as in their geopolitical interest.

Beijing continues to be a major threat, they argue. While urging global responses like better intelligence, better inspections and better safeguarding of nuclear materials, they also see generational change in China as a great hope in plugging the atomic leaks.

“We must continue to support human rights within Chinese society, not just as an American export, but because it is the dream of the Tiananmen Square generation,” they write. “In time those youngsters could well prevail, and the world will be a less contentious place.”

Dr. Younger notes how political restraints and global treaties worked for decades to curb atomic proliferation, as did American assurances to its allies. “It is a tribute to American diplomacy,” he writes, “that so many countries that might otherwise have gone nuclear were convinced to remain under the nuclear umbrella of the United States.”

And he, too, emphasizes the importance of political sticks and carrots to halting and perhaps reversing the spread of nuclear arms. Iran, he says, is not fated to go nuclear.

“Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina and Brazil all flirted with nuclear programs, and all decided to abandon them,” he notes. “Nuclear proliferation is not unidirectional — given the right conditions and incentives, it is possible for a nation to give up its nuclear aspirations.”

The take-home message of both books is quite the reverse of Oppenheimer’s grim forecast. But both caution that the situation has reached a delicate stage — with a second age of nuclear proliferation close at hand — and that missteps now could hurt terribly in the future.

Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman take their title, “The Nuclear Express,” from a 1940 radio dispatch by Edward R. Murrow , who spoke from London as the clouds of war gathered over Europe. He told of people feeling like the express train of civilization was going out of control.

The authors warn of a similar danger today and suggest that only close attention to the atomic past, as well as determined global action, can avoid “the greatest train wreck” in history.

[ShauryaT]

[Tilak]

Former ISI chief linked to banned al Qaeda WMD advisory group
By Bill Roggio
December 8, 2008 2:06 AM

A former leader of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency has been implicated as serving on the board of a proscribed non-governmental organization that advised al Qaeda and the Taliban on the development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

Lieutenant General (Retired) Hamid Gul served on the board of the Umma Tameer-E-Nau, an organization founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists and industrialists, according to a secret dossier that the United States has put together to present to the United Nations Security Council, The News reported. Gul has also been implicated in supporting the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and other extremist groups.

Gul served as the chief of the ISI from 1987 to 1989. Gul is known as the Godfather of the Taliban for his efforts to organize the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and the helping to facilitate the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s. Gul supports the terrorist insurgency in India-occupied Kashmir and opposes the US-led effort to defeat Islamic extremism.

The Umma Tameer-E-Nau "was founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists with close ties to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban," theUS government stated in December 2001 after blocking the group's finances under Executive Order 13224. Three of the group's directors - two Pakistani nuclear scientists and an industrialist - were also proscribed under the executive order.

The group has been directly linked to the WAFA Humanitarian Organization and Al Rashid Trust, "two other non-governmental organizations with ties to al Qaeda that were designated on September 23, 2001 as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224."

WAFA, a charitable front funded by a Saudi businessman, had offices in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. The group is run by al Qaeda and used to funnel money to the terror group. Al Rashid operates 21 offices in Pakistan and openly supports the Taliban and calls for jihad against the West.

The Umma Tameer-E-Nau's founders have "close ties to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban," the US government stated. "During repeated UTN visits to Afghanistan, UTN directors and members have met with Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda leaders, and Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, and discussed the development of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons."

Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood, the group's founder, served as Pakistan's Director for Nuclear Power at the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission. He also directed the Khushab nuclear plant which produces plutonium for Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. Abdul Majeed, a board member, was a senior official at the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission.

US charges against Gul

The US government claims Gul "maintained extensive contacts over the years with Taliban and al Qaeda operatives located in Pakistan, providing financial support and encouragement to these groups," The News reported. He has provided "general, over-arching guidance to the Taliban leadership on operational activities in Afghanistan."

Gul has maintained direct contact with the Pakistani Taliban and Baitullah Mehsud, the group’s leader, as well as with Siraj Haqqani, the powerful warlord in North Waziristan and eastern Afghanistan.

According to the report, Gul has helped with "spotting, assessing, and recruiting young men from various Pakistani Madrassas for training in eventual attacks against US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan." He also helped establish terror training camps and appointed the leader of one of the camps.

Gul also is involved with financing a "Kabul-based criminal group" that kidnapped foreigners and "sold weapons and explosives to the Taliban and acted as travel facilitators for Taliban members in Afghanistan." The criminal group is the notorious D-Company, the mafia-terror outfit run by wanted South Asian don Dawood Ibrahim, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

US targets Pakistan's shadow command

In the wake of the Nov. 26 Mumbai, India terror siege, the US has stepped up the pressure on the Pakistani government to purge the military and intelligence services of al Qaeda and Taliban supporters and sympathizers. The Indian government and US officials have directly implicated the ISI and military-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba as being behind the 62 hour-long-assault by a team of trained terrorists that shut down India's financial hub.

Late last week, news that the US is planning to approach the United Nations Security Council to have several senior ISI and military leaders added to the UN list of terrorists. The move would block their internationals finances as well as add them to INTERPOL's list of wanted individuals.

Included on the list of former Pakistani intelligence officers being submitted to the UNSC are former ISI officials Hamid Gul, Javid Nasir, and Zahirul Islam Abbasi, as well as Aslam Beg, a senior Army officer. The US is also considering adding Khalid Khawaja, a former Squadron Commander in the Air Force, and Brigadier Ijaz Shah, the former Director of Intelligence Bureau. Khawaja has aided al Qaeda members that sheltered in Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2002, while Shah has been implicated in the death of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.


For more on the ISI's involvement with Pakistani terror groups, see
Pakistan's Jihad

PS : Bill Roggio has been doing an excellent job of tracking Keeda-ISI-Pakistan at his blog.

[Arun_S]

US sanctions on AQ Khan 'allies'

The US has imposed sanctions on people and companies linked to the former head of Pakistan's nuclear programme, the disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The state department said 13 people and three companies would be targeted for their alleged involvement in Mr Khan's illicit trading of nuclear technology.

US officials said they hoped the sanctions would "help prevent future proliferation-related activities".

Mr Khan admitted transferring nuclear secrets to other countries in 2004.

He was later pardoned by former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and has been under virtual house arrest in Islamabad ever since.

In July, Mr Khan told the media that Pakistan had transported uranium enrichment equipment to North Korea in 2000 with the full knowledge of the country's army, then headed by Gen Musharraf.

The former leader has repeatedly stated that no-one apart from Mr Khan had any knowledge of the transportation of nuclear technology.

'No longer operating'

In a statement, the US state department said that sanctions would be imposed on 13 individuals and three private companies "for their involvement in the AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network".

Countries should remain vigilant to ensure that Khan network associates... will not become a future source for sensitive nuclear information or equipment
US Department of State

"We believe these sanctions will help prevent future proliferation-related activities by these private entities, provide a warning to other would-be proliferators," it said.

"While we believe the AQ Khan network is no longer operating, countries should remain vigilant to ensure that Khan network associates, or others seeking to pursue similar proliferation activities, will not become a future source for sensitive nuclear information or equipment."

The sanctions followed a US government review of information about the network, the state department added.

The individuals targeted include British, German, Turkish, Swiss and Sri Lankan nationals.

One of them, German engineer Gotthard Lerch, was sentenced last year to five-and-a-half years in prison for breaking export and weapons laws by sending uranium-enrichment equipment to Libya.

Last year, a UN nuclear watchdog said the AQ Khan network had smuggled nuclear weapon technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea and had been active in 12 countries.

Silly me I thought the US sanctioned Kiyani and TSPA.

Even more stupider me for earlier believing that AQK network was already dismantled and destroyed. I wonder how this vistage of love survived, to require yet another Fatwa by USA?

[arun]

The OFAC Notification for the addition of more individuals/firms who assisted A.Q. Khan to the SDN List :

OFAC Notification

[ldev]

Fascinating article. Apologies if posted earlier.

Obama’s Worst Pakistan Nightmare

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: January 8, 2009
TO GET TO THE HEADQUARTERS of the Strategic Plans Division, the branch of the Pakistani government charged with keeping the country’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons away from insurgents trying to overrun the country, you must drive down a rutted, debris-strewn road at the edge of the Islamabad airport, dodging stray dogs and piles of uncollected garbage. Just past a small traffic circle, a tan stone gateway is manned by a lone, bored-looking guard loosely holding a rusting rifle. The gateway marks the entry to Chaklala Garrison, an old British cantonment from the days when officers of the Raj escaped the heat of Delhi for the cooler hills on the approaches to Afghanistan. Pass under the archway, and the poverty and clamor of modern Pakistan disappear.

Chaklala is a comfortable enclave for the country’s military and intelligence services. Inside the gates, officers in the army and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI, live in trim houses with well-tended lawns. Business is conducted in long, low office buildings, with a bevy of well-pressed adjutants buzzing around. Deep inside the garrison lies the small compound for Strategic Plans, where Khalid Kidwai keeps the country’s nuclear keys. Now 58, Kidwai is a compact man who hides his arch sense of humor beneath a veil of caution, as if he were previewing each sentence to decide if it revealed too much. In the chaos of Pakistan, where the military, the intelligence services and an unstable collection of civilian leaders uneasily share power, he oversees a security structure intended to protect Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from outsiders — Islamic militants, Qaeda scientists, Indian saboteurs and those American commando teams that Pakistanis imagine, with good reason, are waiting just over the horizon in Afghanistan, ready to seize their nuclear treasure if a national meltdown seems imminent.

In the second nuclear age, what happens or fails to happen in Kidwai’s modest compound may prove far more likely to save or lose an American city than the billions of dollars the United States spends each year maintaining a nuclear arsenal that will almost certainly never be used, or the thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan to close down sanctuaries for terrorists.

Just last month in Washington, members of the federally appointed bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism made it clear that for sheer scariness, nothing could compete with what they had heard in a series of high-level intelligence briefings about the dangers of Pakistan’s nuclear technology going awry. “When you map W.M.D. and terrorism, all roads intersect in Pakistan,” Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and a leading nuclear expert on the commission, told me. “The nuclear security of the arsenal is now a lot better than it was. But the unknown variable here is the future of Pakistan itself, because it’s not hard to envision a situation in which the state’s authority falls apart and you’re not sure who’s in control of the weapons, the nuclear labs, the materials.”

For Kidwai, there is something both tiresome and deeply suspicious about the constant stream of warnings out of Washington that Pakistan is the epicenter of a post-cold-war Armageddon. “This is all overblown rhetoric,” Kidwai told me on a rainy Saturday morning not long ago when I went to visit him in his office, which is comfortably outfitted with oversize white leather chairs and models of the Pakistani missiles that can deliver a nuclear weapon to the farthest corners of India. Even if the country’s leadership were to be incapacitated, he insisted, Pakistan’s protections are so strong that the arsenal could never slip from the hands of the country’s National Command Authority, a mix of hardened generals (including Kidwai) and newly elected politicians. Kidwai has spent the past five years making the same case to American officials: just because a savvy metallurgist named Abdul Qadeer Khan, a national hero for his role in turning Pakistan into a nuclear-weapons power, managed to smuggle nuclear secrets and materials to the likes of Iran, North Korea and Libya for profit in the 1980s and 1990s, it doesn’t mean that such a horrendous breach of security could happen again.

“Please grant to Pakistan that if we can make nuclear weapons and the delivery systems,” Kidwai said, gesturing to the models and a photo of Pakistan’s first nuclear test, a decade ago, “we can also make them safe. Our security systems are foolproof.”

“FOOLPROOF” IS MOST likely not the word Barack Obama would use to describe the status of Pakistan’s nuclear safety following the briefings he has been receiving since Nov. 6, which is when J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, showed up in Chicago to give the president-­elect his first full presidential daily brief. For obvious reasons, neither Obama nor McConnell will talk about the contents of those highly classified briefings. But interviews over the past year with senior intelligence officials and with nuclear experts in Washington and South Asia and at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna provide strong indications of what Obama has probably heard.

By now Obama has almost surely been briefed about an alarming stream of intelligence that began circulating early last year to the top tier of George W. Bush’s national-security leadership in Washington. The highly restricted reports described how foreign-trained Pakistani scientists, including some suspected of harboring sympathy for radical Islamic causes, were returning to Pakistan to seek jobs within the country’s nuclear infrastructure — presumably trying to burrow in among the 2,000 or so people who have what Kidwai calls “critical knowledge” of the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure.

“I have two worries,” one of the most senior officials in the Bush administration, who had read all of the intelligence with care, told me one day last spring. One is what happens “when they move the weapons,” he said, explaining that the United States feared that some groups could try to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India in the hope that the Pakistani military would transport tactical nuclear weapons closer to the front lines, where they would be more vulnerable to seizure. Indeed, when the deadly terror attacks occurred in Mumbai in late November, officials told me they feared “And the second,” the official said, choosing his words carefully, “is what I believe are steadfast efforts of different extremist groups to infiltrate the labs and put sleepers and so on in there.” As Obama’s team of nuclear experts have discovered in their recent briefings, it is Pakistan’s laboratories — one of which still bears A. Q. Khan’s name — that still pose the greatest worries for American intelligence officials. It is relatively easy to teach Kidwai’s security personnel how to lock down warheads and store them separately from trigger devices and missiles — training that the United States has conducted, largely in secret, at a cost of almost $100 million. It is a lot harder for the Americans to keep track of nuclear material being produced inside laboratories, where it is easier for the Pakistanis to underreport how much nuclear material has been produced, how much is in storage or how much might be “stuck in the pipes” during the laborious enrichment process. And it is nearly impossible to stop engineers from walking out the door with the knowledge of how to produce fuel, which Khan provided to Iran, and bomb designs.

After more than four years, no one in Washington has a clear sense of whether the small, covert American program to help Pakistan secure its weapons and laboratories is actually working. Kidwai has been happy to take the cash and send in progress reports, but auditors from Washington have been rebuffed whenever they have asked to see how, exactly, the money was being spent. Kidwai, when pressed, says that the Americans shouldn’t offer lectures about nuclear security, not after the U.S. Air Force lost track of some of its own weapons in 2007 for 36 hours, flying them around unguarded to air bases and leaving them by the side of the tarmac. He makes use of another argument as well, a legacy of the Bush era that will last for many years: how can an intelligence apparatus in the United States that got Iraq’s nuclear progress so wrong in 2003 be so certain today that Pakistan’s arsenal is at risk?

Pakistani officials are understandably suspicious that the real intent of the American program is to gather the information needed to snatch, or neutralize, the country’s arsenal. So they have met most requests with the same answer they gave the C.I.A. when it wanted to interview Khan: Don’t waste your time submitting a formal request. “It is a matter of national sovereignty,” Kidwai says, “and a matter of our honor.”

Khalid Kidwai is only a few years younger than Pakistan itself, and he has spent much of his life trying to create pockets of order in a nation to which order does not come naturally. His father, Jalil Ahmed Kidwai, was one of the country’s best-known authors and critics; his mother founded a school in Karachi. Kidwai was born into an era in which the overriding question on the minds of most Muslims in Pakistan was whether the country could withstand India’s onslaughts, and it did not take long for the young Khalid to settle on his dream: to fly with the Pakistani Air Force, the most romantic branch of the armed forces in a new nation that believed it needed to be able to strike deep into India if it was to survive. At age 12, he passed the exam for the air-force-sponsored school in Sargodha, the site of the country’s largest air base, but when he graduated, Kidwai received the disheartening news that he would never become a pilot: a mild eye disorder disqualified him. “My next obvious choice was the army,” he told me, and like many in his generation of military men in Pakistan, he never fully left it, even after his retirement, or lost the professional pride and the security blanket it provides.

In 1971, Kidwai was captured during a war with India and held as a prisoner of war for two years in the north Indian city of Allahabad — an experience he is still reluctant to discuss. After returning to the Pakistani officer corps, he was posted in 1979 to the artillery training school at Fort Sill, Okla., as part of a program that allowed the American military to get to know a rising generation of Pakistani officers. Kidwai recalls that whenever the fort’s brass turned to nuclear-weapons training, they found something else for the foreign officers to do. “We’d be sent off for trips to Washington or someplace,” Kidwai recalled with a laugh, “so that we were out of earshot.”

In 1998, Pakistan responded to a round of Indian nuclear tests by exploding its own bombs. Like the rest of the country, Kidwai watched on television as the Chagai hills shook from Pakistan’s underground tests. His nation had done more than answer India’s challenge; it had built the ultimate deterrent. Along the way, Pakistan had overcome a series of halfhearted efforts, led by the United States, to cut off its nuclear supplies. Year after year, Pakistan lied to Washington when confronted with all-but-definitive evidence that it was constructing a weapon. Pakistan simply endured the resulting economic sanctions. It all seemed worth it, Pakistani officials have told me, after India detonated five test bombs and Pakistan came back with six. “That was one-upmanship,” Kidwai said, smiling proudly as we looked at a photograph of one test, which was hanging on his office wall. “India had conducted only five.” Below the photographs, Kidwai keeps a small fragment of the Chagai mountain under glass, displayed like a moon rock at the Smithsonian. The explosion had turned it bright white.

NO SOONER HAD THE radioactive and diplomatic dust settled from the test site than Kidwai was called in by his army superiors, and ultimately, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and told that he would now head an urgent project: to come up with a system to protect Pakistan’s new weapon from all of its enemies — the Indians, Western Europeans and the angry Americans. Kidwai knew speed was of the essence. Pakistan’s leaders feared that if the West thought that Pakistan had just a few weapons in its inventory, and no system to assure their safety, they would come under even more pressure to roll back the program and give up the handful they had manufactured. The only way to resist that pressure, they knew, was to create a large arsenal quickly and to hide it in underground facilities where neither the Indians nor the Americans could seize or destroy the warheads. Then they needed to convince the world that Pakistan could become a responsible nuclear power, one capable of securing its weapons as well as the Russians, the Chinese or the Israelis did. That meant Kidwai had to learn the arts of nuclear safety from the Americans, but without teaching his teachers how to neutralize Pakistan’s arsenal.

Kidwai got off to a rocky start. The Pakistani nuclear program owes its very existence to the government-endorsed and government-financed subterfuges of A. Q. Khan, who then turned the country into the biggest source of nuclear-weapons proliferation in atomic history. And while Khan may be the most famous nuclear renegade in Pakistan, he is not the only one. Soon after Kidwai took office, he also faced the case of the eccentric nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who helped build gas centrifuges for the Pakistani nuclear program, using blueprints Khan had stolen from the Netherlands. Mahmood then moved on to the country’s next huge project: designing the reactor at Khushab that was to produce the fuel Pakistan needed to move to the next level — a plutonium bomb.

An autodidact intellectual with grand aspirations, Mahmood was fascinated by the links between science and the Koran. He wrote a peculiar treatise arguing that when morals degrade, disaster cannot be far behind. Over time, his colleagues began to wonder if Mahmood was mentally sound. They were half amused and half horrified by his fascination with the role sunspots played in triggering the French and Russian Revolutions, World War II and assorted anticolonial uprisings. “This guy was our ultimate nightmare,” an American intelligence official told me in late 2001, when The New York Times first reported on Mahmood. “He had access to the entire Pakistani program. He knew what he was doing. And he was completely out of his mind.”

While Khan appeared to be in the nuclear-proliferation business chiefly for the money, Mahmood made it clear to friends that his interest was religious: Pakistan’s bomb, he told associates, was “the property of a whole Ummah,” referring to the worldwide Muslim community. He wanted to share it with those who might speed “the end of days” and lead the way for Islam to rise as the dominant religious force in the world.

Eventually Mahmood’s religious intensity, combined with his sympathy for Islamic extremism, scared his colleagues. In 1999, just as Kidwai was beginning to examine the staff of the nuclear enterprise, Mahmood was forced to take an early retirement. At a loss for what to do, Mahmood set up a nonprofit charity, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, which was ostensibly designed to send relief to fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. In August 2001, as the Sept. 11 plotters were making their last preparations in the United States, Mahmood and one of his colleagues at the charity met with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, over the course of several days in Afghanistan. There is little doubt that Mahmood talked to the two Qaeda leaders about nuclear weapons, or that Al Qaeda desperately wanted the bomb. George Tenet, the C.I.A. chief, wrote later that intelligence reports of the meeting were “frustratingly vague.” They included an account that there was talk of how to design a simple firing mechanism, and that a senior Qaeda leader displayed a canister that may have contained some nuclear material (though almost certainly not bomb-grade).

In the weeks after 9/11, the tales of the meeting were enough to set off panic. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a longtime C.I.A. nuclear expert, was given perhaps the most daunting job at the agency in the aftermath of 9/11: to make sure that Al Qaeda did not have a weapon of mass destruction at its disposal. “The worst nightmare we had at that time was that A. Q. Khan and Osama bin Laden were somehow working together,” Mowatt-Larssen told me one day last winter in his basement office in a secure vault at the Energy Department, where he moved after his time at the C.I.A. to head up the department’s intelligence unit. As if to drive home the point to visitors to his underground lair, Mowatt-Larssen, who is leaving the government this month to become a senior fellow at Harvard, keeps a floor-to-ceiling centrifuge in the corner of his office, where most people might put a potted plant. The gleaming silver device, which is meant to spin at terrifying speed to enrich uranium, was seized in Libya — part of the cache that Muammar el-Qaddaffi bought from Khan.

Musharraf tried to tamp down American alarm. He told Tenet and Mowatt-Larssen that “men in caves can’t do this.” He had Mahmood and his colleague rearrested, though they were never prosecuted. Pakistan did not want to risk a trial in which the country’s own nuclear secrets came out. Today, Mahmood, like Khan, is back home, under tight surveillance that seems intended primarily to keep him a safe distance from reporters.

Kidwai insists that the Mahmood incident was overblown, raised time and again by Americans to create the image that Pakistan is a nuclear sieve. “Nothing went anywhere,” he assured me. “It’s over.” But what’s terrifying about Mahmood’s story is not what happened around the campfire, but rather that the meetings happened at all. They took place three years after Kidwai and his team started their work and demonstrated the huge vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure at the time.

Kidwai says he has not received any specific intelligence from the United States about “sleeper” scientists trying to infiltrate Pakistan’s facilities. Moreover, he says, there is now also a far more effective screening process in place. When we met, Kidwai spent considerable time describing the extensive “personal-reliability program” that he has created to screen existing employees and applicants to the program. Kidwai’s intelligence agency monitors nuclear employees’ private bank accounts, foreign trips and meetings with anyone who might be considered an extremist. But Americans have their doubts. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted to me that “there is no human vetting system that is entirely reliable,” pointing out that lie detector tests and other screening techniques that C.I.A. em­ployees regularly undergo have, at times, failed to identify spies. In Pakistan, the problem is made worse by the fact that the universities — where the nuclear program draws its young talent — are now more radicalized than at any time in memory, and the nuclear program itself has greatly expanded. Kidwai estimated that there are roughly 70,000 people who work in the nuclear complex in Pakistan, including 7,000 to 8,000 scientists and the 2,000 or so with “critical knowledge.” If even 1 percent of those employees are willing to spread Pakistan’s nuclear knowledge to outsiders with a cause, Kidwai — and the United States — have a problem.

JUST AS KIDWAI FEARS, every few months someone in Washington — either at the Pentagon, or the Energy Department, or on the campus of the National Defense University — runs a simulation of how the United States should respond if a terrorist group infiltrates the Pakistani nuclear program or manages to take over one or two of its weapons. In these exercises, everyone plays to type: the State Department urges negotiations, while the Joint Special Forces Command loads its soldiers and nuclear teams into airplanes. The results of these simulations are highly classified, for fear of tipping off the Pakistanis about what the United States knows and doesn’t know about the location of the country’s weapons. But most of these war games conclude in a sea of ambiguity, with the participants who are playing top officials in Islamabad and Washington unable to get a clear picture of what happened and, if something is missing, the Pakistanis unwilling to admit it. As one frequent participant in these tabletop exercises put it to me, “Most of them don’t end well.”

The Pakistanis insist that these American fears are exaggerated and that it would be next to impossible for someone to steal all the elements of a weapon. As Kidwai paced me through PowerPoints and diagrams, his message was that Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons-safety program is up to “international standards.” But back in Washington, military and nuclear experts told me that the bottom line is that if a real-life crisis broke out, it is unlikely that anyone would be able to assure an American president, with confidence, that he knew where all of Pakistan’s weapons were — or that none were in the hands of Islamic extremists. “It’s worse than that,” the participant in the simulations told me. “We can’t even certify exactly how many weapons the Pakistanis have — which makes it difficult to sound convincing that there’s nothing to worry about.”

Over time, it appears that the deep mutual suspicions have impeded the effort to ensure the safety of Pakistan’s arsenal. One of America’s key nuclear-safety technologies — PALs, or “permissive action links” — is a series of codes and hardware protections that make sure only a very small group of authorized users can arm and detonate a nuclear weapon. It is a cold-war leftover, designed to make sure some rogue sergeant in a silo didn’t wing a weapon toward Moscow. But it may be more important in the second nuclear age than it was in the first. When countries that have little or no experience with nuclear weapons suddenly find themselves stacking their arsenal up in tunnels and caves, it would be nice to know that a terrorist who procured a weapon could not simply set the timer and walk away. PALs depend on what is essentially a switch in the firing circuit that requires the would-be user to enter a numeric code to start a timer for the weapon’s arming and detonation. If the sequence of numbers entered turns out to be incorrect in a fixed number of tries, the whole system disables itself. It is pretty similar to what happens when you repeatedly type the wrong password into an A.T.M., and the machine eats your bank card. But in this case, imagine that someone trying to use your stolen card entered the wrong code one time too many, and a series of small explosions was set off to wreck the innards of the bank machine. That’s what happens to an American warhead — it is rendered useless.

Pakistan would clearly benefit from a PALs system of its own. But under U. S. law, Washington cannot transfer nuclear technology to the Pakistanis, even technology to make their weapons safer, because the country is a rogue nuclear state. By all accounts, the Bush administration has abided by the law. Nuclear experts like Harold M. Agnew, the former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, view the restriction as ridiculous. “Anybody who joins the club should be helped to get this,” he told my colleague Bill Broad. “Whether it’s India or Pakistan or China or Iran, the most important thing is that you want to make sure there is no unauthorized use. You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”

Even if Washington had made PALs available, it’s doubtful that the Pakistanis would have trusted the United States enough to accept them. Any PALs devices delivered in a FedEx box from Washington, they would have figured, would come with a secret “kill switch” allowing someone deep inside the bowels of the Pentagon to track or disable Pakistan’s nuclear assets. They would have undoubtedly been right.

Kidwai insists that he solved this problem by sending Pakistani engineers off to develop what you might call “Pak-PALs,” a domestic version of the American system. He told me that it was every bit as safe as the American version. No one will talk about what role, if any, the United States played in helping design this system. But history provides a possible guide. Back in the early 1970s, the United States sought to help France protect its own arsenal without directly divulging its own methods. American nuclear scientists began highly secretive discussions with their French counterparts that amounted to a game of 20 Questions, though in Washington-speak it was termed “negative guidance.”

IN BUSH’S LAST YEAR in office, Pakistan’s downward spiral came to dominate the meetings of the principals down in the Situation Room of the White House. First came the assassination in late December 2007 of Benazir Bhutto, which resulted in a secret trip by McConnell, the intelligence chief, and the director of the C.I.A., Michael V. Hayden, to Islamabad. It was the first of a series of secret missions to convince Musharraf and his handpicked successor as the chief of the army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, that the militants in the tribal areas were now aiming to bring down the government in Islamabad. The message was simple and direct: The Pakistani leadership needed to forget about India and focus on the threat from within.

But with each successive trip it became clearer and clearer, particularly to McConnell, that the gap between how Washington viewed the threat and how the Pakistanis viewed it was as yawning as ever. Even worse, suspicions grew that Inter-Services Intelligence was directly aiding the Taliban and other jihadist militants, seeing them as a useful counterweight to India’s influence in the region.

Washington’s sanguinity was not increased when Pakistan’s new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, arrived in Washington over the summer for what turned out to be a disastrous first visit. Gilani, as the country’s first civilian leader in more than a decade, was under huge pressure to show he could bring the intelligence agency, and the country, under control. He couldn’t — a brief effort to force the ISI to report to the civilian leadership was quashed — but he thought he had better show up with a gift for President Bush.

Gilani wanted to tell Bush that he had sent forces into the tribal areas to clean out a major madrassa where hard-line ideology and intolerance were part of the daily curriculum. There were roughly 25,000 such private Islamic schools around Pakistan, though only a small number of them regularly bred young terrorists. The one he decided to target was run by the Haqqani faction of Islamic militants, one of the most powerful in the tribal areas.

Though Gilani never knew it, Bush was aware of this gift in advance. The National Security Agency had picked up intercepts indicating that a Pakistani unit warned the leadership of the school about what was coming before carrying out its raid. “They must have called 1-800-HAQQANI,” said one person who was familiar with the intercepted conversation. According to another, the account of the warning sent to the school was almost comic. “It was something like, ‘Hey, we’re going to hit your place in a few days, so if anyone important is there, you might want to tell them to scram.’ ”

When the “attack” on the madrassa came, the Pakistani forces grabbed a few guns and hauled away a few teenagers. Sure enough, a few days later Gilani showed up in the Oval Office and conveyed the wonderful news to Bush: the great crackdown on the madrassas had begun. The officials in the room — Bush; his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley; and others — did not want to confront Gilani with the evidence that the school had been warned. That would have required revealing sensitive intercepts, and they judged, according to participants in the discussion, that Gilani was both incapable of keeping a secret and incapable of cracking down on his military and intelligence units. Indeed, Gilani may not even have been aware that his gift was a charade: Bush and Hadley may well have known more about the military’s actions than the prime minister himself.

WHAT OBAMA NOW inherits in Pakistan is a fully dysfunctional relationship between that country and the United States. Last summer, Bush signed secret orders allowing American special forces to run ground raids into Pakistani territory to root out not only Al Qaeda but also a list of other militants who could be targeted by either the C.I.A. or American military commandos. The first such raid, in September, provoked such a firefight and outrage in Pakistan that most other raids were suspended. But the reasons for the Pakistani government’s anger went beyond the concern that Bush was publicly violating Pakistani sovereignty. If American special forces were now authorized to come into the country to snatch or kill a range of militants, several Pakistani officials said to me, would it be very long before they tried to get the country’s nuclear weapons as well?

Though few in Washington will admit it, it is the right question. At the end of Bush’s term, his aides handed over to Obama’s transition team a lengthy review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, concluding that in the end, the United States has far more at stake in preventing Pakistan’s collapse than it does in stabilizing Afghanistan or Iraq.

“Only one of those countries has a hundred nuclear weapons,” a primary author of the report said to me. For Al Qaeda and the other Islamists, he went on to say, “this is the home game.” He paused, before offering up the next thought: For anyone trying to keep a nuclear weapon from going off in the United States, it’s our home game, too.

[sanjaykumar]

So Americans do understand this is the home game-the battle is half won already.

India can sit back and light a bidi.

[Rudradev]

So Americans do understand this is the home game-the battle is half won already.

India can sit back and light a bidi.

Unfortunately not; so far, America's preferred tactic for winning their "home game" has been to throw money at Pakistan, while hallucinating deliriously about the non-existent Enlightened Moderate leadership who will turn everything around if only the Yindoos are made to keep out of Afghanistan and give up Cashmere.

No beedi for us, it's go time and will be for the foreseeable future.

[Philip]

US blacklists British businessmen over alleged nuclear proliferation network

The United States on Monday unveiled sanctions against detained Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, 12 associates of his and three firms linked to his nuclear proliferation network.

Last Updated: 12:03AM GMT 13 Jan 2009

The sanctions forbid the 16 from having business dealings with the US government or private US firms in what the State Department says is a renewed bid to make sure the network has been shut down entirely.

"This is a prudent effort on our part," a State Department official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

The official said that Washington has had concerns that elements of the network could still be active since Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, acknowledged his role nearly five years ago.

Khan has been effectively under house arrest in Islamabad since February 2004, when he confessed on television to sending nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, although he retracted his remarks later.

"We want to close any loopholes. We think that this network has been dismantled, but we don't know that with absolute certainly," the US official said.

The sanctions are also a signal to other countries.

"Certainly we hope it will encourage other countries to frankly go out there and look at their existing sanctions and see if they can tighten them," the official said.

In June last year, former UN arms Inspector David Albright urged the US government to pressure Pakistan to allow US or UN experts to question Khan over the sale of nuclear know-how to Iran or North Korea.

It was important to obtain such information in case Khan, a hero for many in Pakistan, is released, he added.

In Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Monday: "AQ Khan is a closed chapter. Pakistan is mindful of its responsibilities as a nuclear weapon state as well as its international obligations."

"The sanctions are not against the state or government. The US has in fact applauded Pakistan's contributions to promote global non-proliferation," the prime minister's office quoted him as saying.

Howard Berman, who chairs the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, welcomed the "belated" sanctions, but said more work is needed to fight proliferation as Barack Obama prepares to assume the presidency next week.

"Equipment and technology from this network may still be circulating, and new suppliers could well spring up to take Khan's place," Berman, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Most of those sanctioned have for years been mentioned in the media over their links to Khan: Turkish businessman Selim Alguadis and his firm EKA Elektronik Kontrol Aletleri Sanayi ve Ticaret AS, Pakistani scientists Muhammad Farooq and Muhammad Nasim ud Din, Sri Lankan scientist Buhary Seyyed Abu Tahor, German engineers Gerhard Wisser and Gotthard Lerch, Swiss engineer Daniel Geiges and British businessmen and brothers Paul and Peter Griffin.

The State Department said many of Khan's associates are either in custody, being prosecuted, or have been convicted of crimes, but did not give details on the status of each.

PS:Ha!Ha! Closing the gate of the pigsty years after the pigs have all fled.If the US really meant business it would've clamped down on the individuals concerned years ago,as well as "picking up" AQK as it has done with hundreds of individuals who are secreted in US secret prisons worldwide.Camp Gitmo would've been the ideal place for AQK and the US could've easily pressurised Pak into handing him over if it had the will to do so.Military and economic snactions against Pak,plus a threat to attack and destroy its nculear assets would've made the Paki military defecate in their aptly coloured trousers.