The nuclear black market that let Iran, Libya and North Korea acquire weapons technology from Pakistan under the noses of international monitors raises suspicions that terror groups also acquired bomb components or plans, experts told The Associated Press. Al-Qaida apparently has shown interest in acquiring nuclear technology. Two Pakistani nuclear scientists were detained in late 2001 after meeting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan on suspicion of giving away secrets, but they were later released without being charged. The military, which controlled the weapons program, also is known to have elements who sympathize with the Taliban and bin Laden. Officials say Abdul Qadeer Khan — the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program — has confessed to selling equipment related to centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Libya also received designs for a nuclear bomb from Pakistan that it handed over to U.S. and British intelligence last month, European diplomats say. Khan, however, has denied making a confession, according to the leading Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami.
"Nope. Nope. We He denies everything!" |
Pakistan itself relied on international black market supplies for the equipment used in its nuclear weapons program that started in the 1970s. "If the black market could transfer technology from Europe to Pakistan in spite of all these sanctions and embargoes, that same black market of smugglers can also pass on materials from this lab to terrorist groups," said A.H. Nayyar, a nuclear physicist and head of the Pakistan Peace Coalition. "The possibility exists and needs to be investigated thoroughly."
Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan on Tuesday denied that Pakistani nuclear technology had fallen into terrorist hands. "It’s absolutely negative, there is no truth in it," he said.
The government also has denied official complicity in giving away technology, but a friend of Khan’s told the AP that top army officials, including now-President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, were "aware of everything." White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration accepted Musharraf’s assurances that the Pakistani government was "not involved in any kind of proliferation."
| "We're very polite that way..." |
Musharraf has said the scientists were given wide latitude to develop the nuclear program and worked in secret even from top officials. That secrecy also has raised fears that nuclear workers may have transferred technology or equipment to terrorists, either for money or ideological sympathy. Experts say centrifuge technology wouldn’t be of much use to terror groups, who probably couldn’t set up the vast facilities required to enrich useful quantities of uranium, with hundreds of technicians needed to run thousands of centrifuges. "It’s hard enough for countries to do," said Gary Samore, a nonproliferation expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. The acquisition of weapons designs, however, would make it far easier for terrorists to make a workable bomb, said David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
| You buy the blueprints, you buy the ingredients... Presto! World War IV! |
And if a terror group was able to obtain highly enriched uranium — anywhere from about 110 to 220 pounds — it could possibly build a bomb similar in design to that used on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II, experts said. "It’s not something that you or I could do in our backyards, but it’s relatively easy," Samore said.
Pakistan is estimated to have produced more than 1,540 pounds of highly enriched uranium, but no official figures have ever been released. "It is very important that all the material that has been produced is accounted for to the last gram," said Nayyar. "If it is not done, then the doubt remains."
| In Pakistan. You're kidding, right? |
Sultan, the military spokesman, declined to comment on whether Khan’s alleged confession mentioned highly enriched uranium and potential leaks of it outside Pakistan.
The strongest known link between Pakistani scientists and terrorists were the 2001 arrests Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood and Abdul Majid, who worked for Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999. The commission, together with Khan’s lab worked on the nuclear weapons program. Mahmood’s son told the AP in December 2002 that his father — a deeply conservative Muslim who sympathized with the Taliban — met bin Laden several times between 2000 and July 2001 and the al-Qaida leader asked how to make nuclear bombs. Mahmood claimed to have rebuffed the request, telling bin Laden "it is not child’s play for you to build a nuclear bomb," according to his son, who didn’t want to be named.
| How many sons does he have? Bet would could figure out which one it was, if we wanted to... |
The scientists were whitewashed cleared of all charges and released in December 2001. "Pakistani scientists were active there (in Afghanistan) — we never got to the bottom of it," said Albright, also a former Iraq nuclear weapons inspector. In light of recent news, the years of Pakistani denials ring especially hollow, Albright said, hoping international pressure would finally make Pakistan come clean. "There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors that the government is throwing up, but at the same time it’s being forced to reveal information," he said. |