Libya paid $50 million to purchase nuclear blueprints from dealers who were part of the AQ Khan network, a report in the New York Times said on Friday. âThose blueprints, along with the capability to make enriched uranium, could have given the Libyans all the elements they needed to make a nuclear bomb. What the Libyans purchased, in the words of an American weapons expert who has reviewed the programme in detail, was both the kitchen equipment âand the recipes,ââ according to the report. The designs flown out of Libya and now in US possession closely resemble the warheads that China tested in the late 1960s and passed on to Pakistan decades ago. There is no evidence that the Libyans actually produced the warheads, much less sufficient nuclear fuel. According to American and European investigators, the network that supplied Libya was enormously complex, and not all the paths led directly back to the Khan Research Laboratories. Centrifuge parts were made in Malaysia, and other parts were obtained in Germany and Japan. The Japanese last year seized critical equipment headed for North Korea, though they never announced it. But both the centrifuge designs and the bomb designs seized in Libya appear to have come from the same country, according to the experts who have reviewed them.
| If this stuff wasn't so scary, it'd be hilarious. We've got Fu Manchu in a turban, played by Binny, the Council of Boskone, played by the Soddy power elite, and now we've got a gen-yew-ine mad scientist. |
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