Pakistan Admits Scientist Gave Centrifuges to

Reuters reports that Pakistan admits Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, provided with centrifuges that can be used to purify uranium for nuclear weapons:

Pakistan has admitted in the past that Khan smuggled nuclear secrets to North Korea, and Libya, but has not given specifics as to what he supplied.

"He has given centrifuges to , but the government was in no way involved in this," Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters.

Following the news accounts about Pakistan's A.Q. Khan can't get much more depressing. California Yankee has been following this story since November 2003, when it became public knowledge that the IAEA was probing a possible link between and Pakistan. The IAEA's investigation came after acknowledged that it had used centrifuge designs that appeared identical to ones used by Pakistan.

On December 23, 2003, Reuters (this link no longer works, but I have a copy of the text), reported Pakistan admitted scientists involved in its atom bomb program may have been driven by "personal ambition or greed" to export technology to . Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said Pakistan was determined to get to the bottom of allegations that nuclear technology may have been transferred to :

He said it began questioning scientists from a state-run laboratory set up by the father of its bomb program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, five to six weeks ago after approaches by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and information from the ian government that "pointed to certain individuals."

"There are indications that certain individuals might have been motivated by personal ambition or greed. But we have not made a final determination," he said.

He stressed that the government itself had never been involved in nuclear proliferation. "It takes its responsibility as a nuclear weapons state very seriously," he said.

"The government of Pakistan has not authorized or initiated any transfers of sensitive nuclear technology or information to other countries," he said. "This is out of the question."

The spokesman said anyone involved in any nuclear technology transfers would be punished: "Nobody is above the law."

A few days later the Associated Press (yet another broken link), reported the U.N. investigation is looking at Pakistan, Russia, China and companies in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and other West European countries into the U.N. investigation into the source of 's centrifuge technology. The Associated Press also linked Pakistan to North Korea's weapons program.

On February 2, 2004 The Los Angeles Times (another broken link), reported that A.Q. Khan signed a confession admitting technology transfers to , Libya and North Korea.

In a background briefing to Pakistani journalists, officials said they had obtained a 12-page confession from Khan, who had led Pakistan's nuclear program since the 1970s and helped it become the first Muslim nation to possess nuclear weapons. They said that although Khan received money in exchange for the secrets, his main motivation in spreading the technology was to help other Islamic nations become nuclear powers.

There was some good news in all this. According to CNN it was the CIA the broke the A.Q. Khan proliferation network:

It was during a visit to Islamabad last October[2003], however, that U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage provided Musharraf with the CIA's evidence of the nuclear smuggling ring run by Khan, according to Pakistani officials.

The intelligence Armitage shared with Musharraf, officials say, included details of Khan's overseas travel, meetings with intermediaries, nuclear technology transfers and bank accounts.

"We discovered the extent of Khan's hidden network. We tagged the proliferators. We detected the network stretching from Pakistan to Europe to the Middle East to Asia offering its wares to countries like North Korea and ," CIA director George Tenet said last week.

Despite the successful efforts of the CIA in uncovering the A.Q. Khan proliferation network I have little hope that a determined can be prevented from developing an atomic bomb.

I have no faith in the diplomatic efforts of Britain, France and Germany to persuade to scrap uranium enrichment. This especially so, in light of the fact that in the 1970s A.Q. Khan worked at a uranium enrichment plant run by British-Dutch-German consortium Urenco. The Reuters article reported that the centrifuge designs used by were based on a machine made by the Dutch enrichment unit of Urenco. The Associated Press was more circumspect, reporting that Urenco denied supplying components. According to the Associated Press, one likely explanation for the link to Urenco was the fact that several West European companies that sold components to Urenco which apparently also sold them to the ians, who then assembled the components.

These shadowy connections remind me of the oil for food scandal.

As former Undersecretary of State and now United Nations Ambassador designate John Bolton has said, the U.S. will not "allow America's national security to be dependent on the good faith of a group of fanatic mullahs seeking nuclear weapons." Unfortunately, that leaves only one option - Regime change. We can hope democracy breaks out in suddenly, but we need to prepare for less desirable probabilities.

Comments

[W.C. Varones]

I love fatwas. I put a fatwa on the bus driver who was a bit surly this morning. I put a fatwa on Barbara Boxer for her attempt to help greedy executives defeat honest accounting.

I can't help wonder, though, if this is a publicity ploy for Osama. As I've pointed out before, he's increasingly crying out for attention.