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| Khanfessions of a proliferator |
| 2004-02-26 |
| From Jane’s Defense Weekly: When Pakistan opened its first international arms exhibition in the port city of Karachi, something was amiss. It was November 2000 and there, among defence industry stalls offering tanks, missiles and rifles, was the booth of A Q Khan Research Laboratories (KRL). The display contained a range of conventional military products, including defence electronics and anti-tank missiles. However, KRL is also a top nuclear weapons laboratory and its employees were distributing stacks of glossy brochures that promised technology for producing a nuclear bomb. One of the brochures, a 10-page catalogue from KRL’s Directorate of Vacuum Science and Technology, offered virtually all the components needed to establish a uranium-enrichment plant. The specialised centrifuge pumps, gauges, valves and other components each have civilian uses, but together provide the means to enrich the rare uranium-235 isotope to a particularly pure grade so that it can be used to fuel a nuclear weapon. If there was any doubt as to what was on offer, a second accompanying brochure under the heading of "nuclear-related products" listed "complete ultracentrifuge machines" and other components needed to build a uranium-enrichment plant. JDW readily obtained the brochures on the spot and inquired whether all of the listed items were available for sale. Several KRL officials provided positive assurances that all had government approval for export. Bombs R’Us The suppliers of that technology, international investigators would later learn, were part of a clandestine network of scientists, manufacturers and middlemen spread across four continents and with Abdul Qadeer Khan - KRL’s founder - at its head. They operated a blackmarket of atomic expertise so extensive that it was dubbed a ’Nuclear Walmart’ by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohammed ElBaradei. Khan "served as director of the network, its leading scientific mind, as well as its primary salesman", US President George Bush said on 11 February. Bush named Buhary Seyed Abu Tahir of Dubai as Khan’s deputy and "both the network’s chief financial officer and money launderer". According to a Malaysian police report, Tahir has admitted his involvement but claims "it was a loose network without a rigid hierarchy or a head and a deputy". At its zenith, Vienna-based diplomats and the police report said, the organisation was a wide-ranging network of suppliers and middlemen providing uranium-enrichment components, blueprints and expertise to Libya, Iran and North Korea. It was Libya that proved the network’s ultimate downfall. Following a decision by Libyan leader Col Muammar Ghadaffi to give up the country’s weapons of mass destruction, the Libyans provided inspectors with intimate details of their programmes, a diplomatic source said. Never thought I’d be saying this. Thanks, Moammar. Using information provided by Iran, Libya and later an internal investigation by the Pakistani government, officials have started to unravel the network. They said it started in 1976 after Khan fled the European enrichment consortium, Urenco, where he had been working. According to Dutch court documents, he stole Urenco blueprints for the G-1 and G-2 centrifuges, which with modifications became the P-1 and P-2. Just as important, he used his experience and wide contact base from working at the company to build up the network of suppliers. Khan first used this network to provide the components he would need to establish Pakistan’s uranium-enrichment programme at KRL’s facility in Kahuta. US sources say they believe Khan initially ordered more centrifuge parts from those suppliers than Pakistan needed, selling the excess to Iran. Then, as Pakistan’s own programme progressed and switched from the P-1 to the more sophisticated P-2, Khan sold off the older Pakistani equipment to Iran and then Libya. Khan has also admitted to helping North Korea develop an enrichment plant, providing design information, equipment for centrifuges, as well as uranium hexafluoride gas, say Pakistani sources. The sources claim that assistance continued from 1997 until about 2000. Even more worrisome, US intelligence officials note, they believe Khan shared with Pyongyang designs and details on how to make a working HEU-based nuclear warhead that could be carried atop North Korea’s No Dong missiles. HEU = Highly Enriched Uranium. The largest questions remain about how much successive Pakistani governments knew of Khan’s affairs and when they knew it. Following their own investigation, Pakistani officials claim the transfers started in the 1980s and ended by 2001. President Musharraf claims the official Pakistani position is that "no government or military official has been found involved in the activity of proliferation". "Nope, nope, never happened." Pakistani officials claim they did not suspect Khan until at least 2000 and even then had no hard evidence. Part of the problem, Pakistani officials said, was the difficulty of questioning a national hero like Khan who had enjoyed virtual autonomy in running the Islamabad’s nuclear programme for over two decades. Pakistani military officials now privately admit that Khan’s extravagant lifestyle should have led to suspicions that he was conducting secret sales of nuclear expertise. Although a special unit of Pakistani intelligence was responsible for ensuring that nuclear technology did not leak out from KRL, true oversight was sorely lacking. |
| Posted by:Steve |