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Pakistan Sent Teams to Iran and Libya to Investigate Nuclear Smuggling, Official Says
A senior Pakistani official has said that the decision to detain some Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists came after two teams were sent to Iran and Libya to investigate allegations that Pakistani scientists had offered to assist those countries’ nuclear efforts, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 21). “Yes, we sent our own teams to Iran and Libya and the debriefings began after that,” the official said (Paul Haven, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 22). A senior Pakistani official said that an initial team was first sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and then to Tehran. In late December, the team made a separate visit to Tripoli, the official said. The official also said that a round of “debriefing[s]” of nuclear weapons scientists and officials occurred after each trip (Rana Jawad, Agence France-Presse/ChannelNewsAsia.com, Jan. 22). IAEA officials said, though, that they were unaware of the Pakistani visits to Iran and Libya, and that Islamabad was not obligated to inform the agency of its efforts (Haven, Associated Press). Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the teams were sent “to check how much involved (the scientists and engineers) were, whether they were involved or not.” Rashid described the alleged activities of the scientists as “something like information leakage” (Jawad, Agence France-Presse). Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri yesterday called for an expanded international investigation into possible nuclear-related transfers to countries of concern. “What about some of the black marketers and profiteers from Europe and the Gulf? If there’s interest in nonproliferation, there should be even-handedness (in investigating all possible ties),” Kasuri said (Farhan Bokhari, Financial Times, Jan. 22).
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