U.S. Calls on Pakistan to Dismantle Nuclear Black Market

The United States yesterday urged Pakistan to complete its efforts to dismantle its network of covert nuclear supplies that was recently disclosed by the confession of top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to the Washington Times (see GSN, Feb. 9).

Pakistan already has “done quite a bit now to roll up the network,” said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who spoke with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a telephone conversation over the weekend.

“I said to President Musharraf that we wanted to learn as much as we could about what Mr. Khan, and the network, was up to. It has to be pulled up by its roots and examined to make sure we have left nothing behind,” Powell said. “He assured me that was his objective as well, and he would share with us all the information they came up with,” Powell added.

He denied reports that he would soon travel to Pakistan to discuss the nuclear transfer probe.

“I have no plans to travel to Pakistan. I’m sure I will before the spring and summer are out,” Powell said.

He also said that Musharraf had told him that a pardon given to Khan after the scientist admitted to transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea was a “conditional amnesty” — a description confirmed by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, Feb. 10).

“The pardon is specific to charges made so far and about the confessional statement Doctor A.Q. Khan made,” Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said. “This is not a blanket pardon,” he added.

The spokesman also said that Pakistan’s internal proliferation probe was still continuing.

“The investigations have not come to a closure. The pardon granted to Doctor A.Q. Khan is conditional, because it is specific to the charges that came to the surface. They are specific to the results of current investigations established so far,” Khan said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 10).

Musharraf himself said yesterday in an interview with the New York Times that he had suspected for at least three years that Khan was transferring nuclear technology to other countries. He said he had seen indications of Khan’s activities, such as “illegal contacts, maybe suspicions of contacts,” and “suspicious movement” connected to the Khan Research Laboratories, Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons facility.

Musharraf also said, though, that even with his suspicions, he had been concerned about launching an investigation into Khan, seen by many in Pakistan as a hero for providing the country with nuclear weapons, because of the possible political backlash.

“It was extremely sensitive,” Musharraf said. “One couldn’t outright start investigating as if he’s any common criminal,” he added.

Musharraf criticized the United States for waiting until October to provide him with evidence of Khan’s activities.

“If they knew it earlier, they should have told us,” Musharraf said. “Maybe a lot of things would not have happened,” he added.

A senior Bush administration official confirmed that Musharraf was not provided detailed information on Khan until last fall, but added the United States gave Musharraf more general warnings about Khan beginning in 2001 (Rohde/Waldman, New York Times, Feb. 10).

An official involved in Pakistan’s internal proliferation probe said yesterday that Khan has claimed that the uranium enrichment equipment he provided to Iran and North Korea were outdated, according to the Los Angeles Times. Pakistani officials said Khan has said in his signed confession that he had provided Iran and North Korea with old and discarded uranium enrichment centrifuges and other equipment (Mubashi Zaidi, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 10).

Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said yesterday that his country would cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency in its efforts to investigate the international nuclear black market.

“We will share all this information with the IAEA,” Kasuri said. “The IAEA is not an investigative body. … The IAEA has a certain role, and we will do all we can to support the IAEA in that role,” he added (DAWN, Feb. 10).

Western diplomats based in Vienna have said that the list of countries where middlemen in the black market were either based or used to obtain technologies is steadily growing, according to Reuters. Countries so far believed to be involved include Belgium, Germany, Japan, South Africa, the Netherlands and the United States, as well as China, Pakistan and Russia, Reuters reported.

“Other countries will join that list,” said one diplomat. “They (the middlemen) were fishing in many different countries for dual-use technology, countries with high-tech industries. A lot of this technology might have been seemingly innocuous,” the diplomat said (Reuters/Planet Ark, Feb. 10).

Sources close to the IAEA said last week that one middleman is suspected of obtaining centrifuge components from a Japanese company and sending them to Libya, according to the Daily Yomiuri. The name of the company and the date of the suspected transfer have not yet been released, the sources said (Masao Shimazaki, Daily Yomiuri, Feb. 9).

Two of the three countries that Khan has reportedly confessed to aiding — Iran and North Korea — have begun to deny receiving nuclear technology from him, according to reported.

On Sunday, Iran acknowledged that it had purchased equipment from middlemen, but denied doing so from Khan.

“Pakistan’s worries are Iran’s worries, but what is being raised in the media is not true,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. “It is evident that the Islamic Republic is not aware of what is going on behind the scenes and we have just reported to the IAEA the names of the middlemen from whom we bought the parts,” he said (HiPakistan.com, Feb. 9).

The IAEA has reportedly begun an investigation into whether Y.S.R. Parsad, former chairman of the Nuclear Corporation of India, was involved in transferring nuclear technology to Iran, INDOlink.com reported today (INDOlink.com, Feb. 10).

North Korea has also denied receiving nuclear technology from Khan, according to BBC News.

In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman described the allegations as “false propaganda” spread by the United States. The spokesman added that the allegations were part of an attempt by the United States to add credibility to U.S. assertions that North Korea has developed a uranium enrichment program   (BBC News, Feb. 10).

China today said it did not believe that Khan had passed Chinese nuclear technology on to North Korea.

“In recent years, China has adopted a series of measures to step up its control of the export of such technology. The measures we have adopted are now guaranteed by legal means,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said. “Therefore, any suggestion or allegation accusing China of proliferation is baseless,” she said (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, Feb. 10).

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