|
CIA sez Iran got nuclear assistance from AQ Khan
A new report from the Central Intelligence Agency says the arms trafficking network led by the Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan provided Iran's nuclear program with "significant assistance," including the designs for "advanced and efficient" weapons components. The unclassified version of the report, posted Tuesday on the agency's Web site, www.cia.gov, does not say explicitly whether Mr. Khan's network sold Iran complete plans for building a warhead, as the network is known to have done for Libya and perhaps North Korea. But it suggests that American intelligence agencies now believe that the bomb-making designs provided by the network to Iran in the 1990's were more significant than the United States government has previously disclosed.In a recent closed-door speech to a private group, George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, described Mr. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, as being "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden" because of his role in providing nuclear technology to other countries. A tape recording of the speech was obtained by The New York Times. Until now, in discussing Iran's nuclear program, American officials have referred publicly only to the Khan network's role in supplying designs for older Pakistani centrifuges used to enrich uranium. But American officials have also suspected that the Khan network provided Iran with a warhead design as well. The C.I.A. report is the first to assert that the designs provided to Iran also included those for weapons "components." The report to Congress is an annual update, required by law, on countries' acquisition of illicit weapons technology. The posting of the unclassified version on the agency's Web site comes two days before a meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring group, is scheduled to review the status of Iran's weapons program. The "Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions" is the first to be issued by the agency since November. Its focus is the period from July to December 2003, but it also discusses broader trends. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-11-24 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=49624 |