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  • Nuclear/Missile proliferation in South Asia

    From Newyorker.com

    Pearls of wisdom from AQKhan (Father of Pakistan's Islamic bomb)
    “Western countries had never imagined that a poor and backward country like Pakistan would end their [nuclear] monopoly in such a short time,” Khan told a Pakistani newspaper in 1984. “As soon as they realized that Pakistan had dashed their dreams to the ground, they pounced at Pakistan and me like hungry jackals and began attacking us with all kinds of accusations and falsehood. . . . How could they tolerate a Muslim country becoming their equal in this field. . . . All Western countries including Israel are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam. . . . All these activities are part of the crusade which Christians and Jews have been carrying on against Muslims for about one thousand years.”
    Last edited by Jay; 02 Oct 04,, 02:05.
    A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

  • #2
    According to a Western enrichment expert, the first Urenco centrifuge designs Pakistan built were probably based on two first-generation prototype centrifuges designed by Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland (UCN), the Dutch partner in the trilateral Urenco consortium. These machines, the CNOR and SNOR, featured aluminum rotors, connected by bellows. The bellows act to reduce vibrations caused by resonant frequencies at certain operating speeds. Rotors that spin faster than the first of these frequencies are called supercritical. Bellows in supercritical machines allow for longer centrifuges, and thus, more separation of uranium, but they are considered difficult to master. CNOR and SNOR machines have an estimated separative capacity of 2 to 5 separative work units (a standard measure) per year.

    Intelligence reports on the activities of Pakistani agents in the Netherlands in the 1970s concluded in 1980 that a small number of CNOR and SNOR machines were "spinning somewhere in Pakistan."(6) Other sources report that Pakistan had trouble getting these machines to work on a large scale and started replacing them with more reliable machines based on two German Urenco designs, the G-1 and G-2.

    First-generation centrifuges were also being replaced by improved production models at the UCN plant at Almelo during the early and mid-1970s. Dutch intelligence believes that Pakistan obtained design information for the newer centrifuges in part through Khan's efforts-in 1974 UCN asked him to translate classified design documents for the German centrifuges. According to the statement of a senior German official, Pakistani agents obtained centrifuge components and design information in Germany as well.

    Following the 1991 Gulf War, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Urenco design information formed the backbone of Iraq's clandestine centrifuge program. German officials then speculated that the same unknown German sources who provided Pakistan with information on the G-1 and G-2 might have also passed the information to Baghdad.

    A G-1 centrifuge has a capacity of between 2 and 3 separative work units per year. The G-2s have an estimated capacity of 5 to 6 separative work units per year. The comparatively advanced G-2 machine is a supercritical centrifuge featuring two maraging steel rotor tubes connected by a maraging steel bellows.

    Because Pakistan encountered difficulties building and operating centrifuges, it installed considerably more machines than it has successfully operated. In 1986, Kahuta was reported to have 14,000 centrifuges (see June 1987 Bulletin). U.S. officials confirmed that Pakistan might have built that many, but they estimated that only about 1,000 were actually in operation. One official added that Pakistan's centrifuge "junk pile is sizable."

    The estimate of 1,000 machines in operation is consistent with a 1986 report in the Muslim, a daily newspaper in Islamabad. The Muslim reported that Kahuta was "rumored to have 1,000 centrifuges, against a planned capacity of 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuges."(7) The 1983 memo asserted that Kahuta is "eventually to house several thousand machines."

    One U.S. official we interviewed in spring 1991 said that Pakistan was operating nearly 3,000 machines at Kahuta. Pakistan now has the manufacturing capability and know-how to increase the number of machines. But the official said that Pakistan was concentrating on developing more advanced machines and replacing older centrifuges rather than increasing the number in operation.

    We believe that most of Pakistan's centrifuges are based on the G-2 design, although a significant number of the machines could be based on less capable German and Dutch designs. Assuming a mix of types, each with a capacity of between 3 and 5 separative work units per year, Kahuta could produce about 9,000 to 15,000 separative work units per year. This is enough to produce about 45 to 75 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium a year, assuming that natural uranium is fed into the plant and that about 0.3 percent of the uranium 235 is left in the waste, or "tails." If Pakistan had sufficient uranium hexafluoride stocks, it could accept a higher rate of waste. With a 0.5 percent tails assay, Kahuta's annual production could be 60 to 100 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium.

    Assuming that a nuclear device requires about 15 kilograms, Kahuta has the capability to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for 3 to 6 devices a year.

    Kahuta, however, has not operated at nominal capacity for most of its history. By the end of 1991, Pakistan had probably produced between 100 and 200 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium, based on a variety of tails assays and separative capabilities.(8) This is enough material for roughly 6 to 13 nuclear explosive devices.


    Reprocessing:
    One U.S. official interviewed in 1991 said that Pakistan had completed a small reprocessing plant called "New Labs" at the Pinstech complex near Rawalpindi. New Labs is based on blueprints delivered by France, with key equipment bought from a variety of suppliers.

    According to the 1983 State Department memo, New Labs would need several years to separate enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon. The memo adds, however, that New Labs seemed to be large enough to allow for expansion of its reprocessing capacity.

    Because Pakistan lacks a supply of unsafeguarded irradiated fuel, raw intelligence reports have claimed-and experts have speculated- that Pakistan has been trying to build a nuclear reactor that would generate significant amounts of plutonium.

    Recently, more information about Pakistani procurement was revealed in Bundestag committee hearings, which included the testimony of the prosecutor in the 1990 trial of German nationals who helped Pakistan to obtain illegal materials.(10) Rudolf Ortmayer, a German engineer convicted in 1990 of having illegally exported nuclear goods to Pakistan, testified before his trial that the piping he supplied in the late 1980s was "for construction of an indigenous primitive, pool-type reactor." The aluminum fuel-cladding material Ortmeyer supplied would not have been usable in Pakistan's existing reactors.

    Based on Pakistan's procurement of a wide array of related equipment, and the revelation of its program to produce large amounts of nuclear-grade graphite, the West German intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, reported in late 1983 that Pakistan had probably begun to develop an indigenous reactor.

    It has still not been established that Pakistan is building a reactor for plutonium production. But Pakistan has had Chinese assistance in building a tiny research reactor that contains about one kilogram of Chinese-supplied weapon-grade uranium fuel that is under IAEA safeguards. Without a much larger reactor, Pakistan could separate only tiny amounts of plutonium from the small quantities of fuel it could legally withdraw from safeguards. A U.S. official believes that Pakistan probably did some experimental separation of plutonium.


    http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/19....albright.html
    By:
    David Albright is a senior scientist at Friends of the Earth in Washington, D.C. Mark Hibbs is European editor of Nuclear Fuel and Nucleonics Week in Bonn, Germany.
    Last edited by Jay; 02 Oct 04,, 01:25.
    A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

    Comment


    • #3
      Saudi Arabia and Libya have often been reported as early financial backers of Pakistan's proliferation efforts. Western fears of reciprocal deals between Pakistan and those countries heightened in 2002, when Saudi and Libyan representatives attended a test-firing of the Ghauri missile. Libya's nascent nuclear program is now believed to have been based on Pakistani-type centrifuges. Moreover, Saudi officials reportedly mused about alternatives to a U.S. nuclear umbrella just before the de facto Saudi leader, Crown Prince Abdullah, paid an official visit to Pakistan last October.

      Another cause for concern is Pakistan's unauthorized cooperation with Iran, whose leadership admitted to the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency that Iranian centrifuge technology came from Pakistan. Last month, Pakistani authorities questioned three senior scientists from Pakistan's uranium enrichment facility, as well as the facility's former head, Abdul Qadeer Khan, all of whom are suspected of spreading nuclear secrets. Officials were quoted as saying the men acted out of personal greed, though it seems just as plausible that they were acquiring money to fund Pakistan's internal nuclear arms race. The result of the interrogations is unknown; still, Khan claims he is being set up and, contrary to the reported remarks of President Musharraf, asserts that he has never been in Iran.

      In addition, Khan argues that a middleman in Dubai, responsible for delivering nuclear equipment from European suppliers to Pakistan, duplicated orders for this material and delivered the equipment to Iran as well. Did Pakistan's government know the details at the time? It might well depend on how one defines "government." In Pakistan, nuclear projects come under the purview of the army, of which Musharraf was chief of staff when he seized power in 1999; he still retains this position. On the other hand, a civilian political leader in Pakistan can be ignorant of state secrets; the twice-elected prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, now in exile, was never allowed to visit the uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta despite its close proximity to the capital, Islamabad. Perhaps Musharraf is using the ambiguity of his dual roles to shroud the extent of his knowledge.

      The Iran scandal is the second nuclear embarrassment for the president. Soon after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. pressure forced Musharraf to detain two retired scientists from the plutonium project, fervent Muslims who had met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. (By contrast, Khan, although a nationalist, is not an Islamic extremist -- he is even known to have sent Christmas cards to European acquaintances.)
      http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/w...ch2004/826.htm
      A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

      Comment


      • #4
        Nuclear Spinning
        The Iran-Pakistan link.

        By Simon Henderson

        Forget, for the moment, Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — or lack thereof. Consider instead the other WMD conundrum: Iran. Events in Pakistan, where two nuclear scientists were arrested last week, suggest the whole issue is about to blow. (Figuratively, that is.)

        Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, declared, implausibly, that there was no evidence of Iran's trying to build an atomic bomb. Washington was gob-smacked. As with the proverbial duck, Iran's efforts looked like a nuclear-weapons program and sounded like a nuclear-weapons program. The trouble was the lack of proof sufficient to convince the pedants of the IAEA (which, incidentally, has never by itself discovered a clandestine nuclear-weapons program).

        The Pakistani link is crucial to showing Iran's true motives. Pakistan, which tested two nuclear bombs in 1998, used centrifuges to make "highly" enriched (i.e., bomb-grade) uranium. Iran also has centrifuges. The IAEA discovered traces of highly enriched uranium on some of them. Tehran's reported explanation? "They came like that." From where? "We bought the equipment from a middleman."

        The gossip is that Pakistan sold, directly or indirectly, the centrifuge equipment to Iran. The technology involves aluminum tubes — confusingly, the same technology that Saddam Hussein was reported to be interested in, although, to the glee of the war doubters, aluminum tubes found in Iraq so far have proved to be nothing more dangerous than casings for battlefield rockets. Aluminum tubes for centrifuges are decidedly "old-tech" but, in the absence of an alternative, can do the job, given enough time.

        Officially, Pakistan denies it transferred centrifuge technology to Iran. But that still leaves open the possibility that Pakistani scientists did a private deal with Tehran, for money or mischief. The suspect in the frame? Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, who retired nearly three years ago as head of the eponymous Khan Research Laboratory (KRL). But despite Khan's background, there is evidence that he is being set up and is, on this issue, innocent.

        The current state of the friendship between the U.S. and Pakistan is complicated at best, as American soldiers being shot at from Pakistani positions along the border with Afghanistan will testify. Osama bin Laden was reportedly sighted in the remote north-Pakistani town of Chitral recently. A more likely lair is somewhere in the vast, sprawling townships that make up Karachi, Pakistan's largest city on the Arabian Sea coast. President Musharraf, who retains the army uniform he was wearing when a 1999 coup brought him to power, juggles these tensions with Washington. Last month he was reported in the Los Angeles Times as saying that a trip by Khan to Iran had been about short-range missiles rather than nuclear issues. And, earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times quoted former Iranian diplomats as saying that Khan made several trips to Iran, beginning in 1987, and was given a villa on the Caspian Sea coast in return for his assistance.

        This last report caught my eye as I once asked Khan whether he had ever been to Iran. I can remember his reply clearly: "Never." I have spoken with Khan or exchanged letters with him frequently over the years. He is often evasive but I think I can tell when he is telling a diplomatic lie. For the rest of the time, I think he is straightforward with me. I understand he stands by his claim of never having visited Iran.

        The two nuclear scientists arrested last week were departmental directors at KRL. Dr. Mohammed Farooq and Dr. Yassin Chowhan were picked up at 10 P.M. on the night of December 1. They were taken away by Pakistani intelligence agents, accompanied, it is alleged, by English-speaking men, apparently CIA officers. Their homes in Rawalpindi, the city which merges into the capital, Islamabad, are reportedly under surveillance.

        Dr. Farooq was in charge of the section at KRL that dealt with ties to foreign suppliers and customers for KRL products. KRL also makes a range of battlefield products for the Pakistani army, such as a version of a Chinese handheld antiaircraft missile. (It also makes the Pakistani version of the North Korean nuclear-capable Nodong missile.) Dr. Chowhan ran one of the assembly lines at KRL.

        The assumption is that the two men will be held until they confess to assisting Dr. Khan in supplying centrifuges to Iran. Dr. Khan, now retired, is nominally an adviser to President Musharraf, but there is little evidence to show that his advice is sought very often. In the bitchy world of Pakistani politics, there is resentment that Dr. Khan is popularly considered "the father of the Islamic bomb."

        So if Dr. Khan or some other Pakistani scientist did not supply centrifuge technology to Iran, who did? Suspicion falls on a Sri Lankan merchant formally based in Dubai, a member of his country's Muslim minority who has now returned home. The businessman acted as a conduit for Pakistan's orders of components and manufacturing equipment. Using that knowledge, he put in for extra orders of equipment and arranged a side deal with Iran. This scenario dates the start of Iran's centrifuge project to 1979, eight years earlier than the IAEA's assessment. Iran has refused to tell the IAEA the identity of this middleman.

        But what about the traces of highly enriched uranium the IAEA found on the equipment in Iran? KRL apparently still uses some of its aluminum centrifuges alongside the later and more efficient ones made out of special steel. Others have been "scrapped and crushed." None has been exported. Perhaps Iran has been more successful at enrichment than it wants to admit.

        Washington's motives are reasonably clear, even if not fully explained in public. Relations with Pakistan are very important. Iran's nuclear ambitions must be curtailed. Presumably if Dr. Khan is blamed, President Musharraf is forced, through embarrassment, into more cooperation with the U.S. But Iran's nuclear progress might be understated, and activities of an unscrupulous middleman might escape closer inspection. As with centrifuges themselves, there is a lot of spin.

        — Simon Henderson is a London-based energy consultant and associate of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

        http://www.nationalreview.com/commen...0312110800.asp
        A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

        Comment


        • #5
          Pakistan Found to Aid Iran Nuclear Efforts
          By DAVID E. SANGER (NYT) words
          Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 12 , Column 4
          A new assessment of Iran's nuclear program by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency says that, as early as 1995, Pakistan was providing Tehran with the designs for sophisticated centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade nuclear fuel.

          http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstrac...A00894DC404482
          A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

          Comment


          • #6
            Revealed: how Pakistan fuels nuclear arms race

            Antony Barnett investigates the illegal global market in nuclear equipment and expertise and how the weapons programmes of Iran, Libya and North Korea all lead back to Pakistan
            http://observer.guardian.co.uk/inter...125614,00.html
            A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

            Comment


            • #7
              Pakistan sold nuclear materials to Iran, Libya Alleged middleman gives details
              of deal to Malaysian police
              The Associated Press
              Updated: 7:52 a.m. ET Feb. 20, 2004

              KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Iran and Libya received black market nuclear materials from Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, police said Friday, citing the deals’ middleman.

              http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4324125/
              A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

              Comment


              • #8
                Nuclear scientists from Pakistan admit helping Iran with bomb-making
                By Massoud Ansari in Karachi
                (Filed: 25/01/2004)

                Scientists and officials working on Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme have admitted for the first time that they gave Iran crucial technical information on building an atomic bomb.

                The latest information from Pakistan's scientists poses a dilemma for President Musharraf, who promised last week to prosecute anyone who sold nuclear secrets.

                He said on Friday that scientists appeared to have sold nuclear designs to other nations "for personal financial gain", but insisted that no state or government officials were involved. He must decide whether to widen the investigation to include senior military figures who have been identified by scientists.

                "This is highly sensitive," said an official. "Some of those identified by the scientists are 'big names', and it would not be easy for the government to lay its hands on them."

                Last weekend's arrests bring the number of KRL scientists and officials arrested by Pakistani authorities over the past two months to more than 20, including key members of the team responsible for Pakistan's 1998 nuclear test. Most have since been released, but at least nine are still under interrogation. Dr Khan has also been questioned, although he was not detained and he denied any involvement in passing information abroad.

                http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...5/ixworld.html
                A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

                Comment


                • #9
                  THE DEAL
                  by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
                  Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers?
                  Issue of 2004-03-08
                  Posted 2004-03-01

                  On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan’s misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan “my hero”). Musharraf told the Times that he had received a specific accounting of Khan’s activities in Iran, North Korea, and Malaysia from the United States only last October. “If they knew earlier, they should have told us,” he said. “Maybe a lot of things would not have happened.”

                  It was a make-believe performance in a make-believe capital. In interviews last month in Islamabad, a planned city built four decades ago, politicians, diplomats, and nuclear experts dismissed the Khan confession and the Musharraf pardon with expressions of scorn and disbelief. For two decades, journalists and American and European intelligence agencies have linked Khan and the Pakistani intelligence service, the I.S.I. (Inter-Service Intelligence), to nuclear-technology transfers, and it was hard to credit the idea that the government Khan served had been oblivious. “It is state propaganda,” Samina Ahmed, the director of the Islamabad office of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that studies conflict resolution, told me. “The deal is that Khan doesn’t tell what he knows. Everybody is lying. The tragedy of this whole affair is that it doesn’t serve anybody’s needs.” Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who is a member of the Pakistani senate, said with a laugh, “America needed an offering to the gods—blood on the floor. Musharraf told A.Q., ‘Bend over for a spanking.’”

                  A Bush Administration intelligence officer with years of experience in nonproliferation issues told me last month, “One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation. Suppose Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology and equipment around the world. Do you really think he could do that without the government knowing? How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels.” The intelligence officer went on, “We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago. Some of those involved today in the smuggling are the children of those we knew about in the eighties. It’s the second generation now.”

                  http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040308fa_fact
                  A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Nuclear Program in Iran Tied To Pakistan
                    Complex Network Acquired Technology and Blueprints

                    By Joby Warrick
                    Washington Post Staff Writer
                    Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A01

                    VIENNA -- Evidence discovered in a probe of Iran's secret nuclear program points overwhelmingly to Pakistan as the source of crucial technology that put Iran on a fast track toward becoming a nuclear weapons power, according to U.S. and European officials familiar with the investigation.

                    http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
                    A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      NPR audio discussion on Irans nuclear program and Pakistan's help :

                      http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCo...PRMediaPref=WM
                      A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam !!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        US could hit Pak nukes if Musharraf is removed'


                        IANS[ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2004 05:20:32 PM ]

                        ISLAMABAD: The US may consider military strikes against Pakistan's nuclear assets if President Pervez Musharraf is removed from power, a Democratic candidate for the Senate has said.

                        Dawn Tuesday quoted Barack Obama, a Democratic Party Senate contender, as saying in San Francisco that the US feared that Islamic extremists would take over Pakistan if Mushrraf were overthrown.

                        In such a situation, the US would have to consider "going in and taking the nuclear bombs out", he said.

                        The Senate hopeful's remarks are in line with Musharraf's own argument that it was important for Pakistan to have him at the helm of affairs as the country would otherwise be taken over by fundamentalists.

                        Ever since Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in May 1998 in a tit-for-tat retaliation against Indian tests, there have been international concerns about its nuclear weapons falling into the hands terrorist and Islamic fundamentalist groups.

                        Pakistan's close links with Afghanistan's then Taliban regime and the way various terrorist groups, including those active in Jammu and Kashmir, operated freely in that country had heightened these fears.

                        Though Islamabad under Musharraf dumped the Taliban and supported the US military offensive against Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US, these failed to remove concerns about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

                        The admission by A Q Khan, the scientist behind Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, that he had sold nuclear secrets to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea had added to these fears.

                        http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/a...how/866628.cms

                        This a good reason for Pakistan to ensure that Musharraf stays in power as long as his natural life is.


                        "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                        I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                        HAKUNA MATATA

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Ray
                          its nuclear weapons falling into the hands terrorist and Islamic fundamentalist groups.
                          If that's what starts to happen, I would agree with the strikes.
                          No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
                          I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
                          even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
                          He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Confed,

                            Personally, I don't find the strike to be terrible way off in the future.


                            "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                            I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                            HAKUNA MATATA

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Good Job Jay.
                              Should hurt some blind people here...

                              All Western countries including Israel are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam
                              Wonder if he wants the bomb in the hands of OBL.For enough money may be.
                              Talk about Kafir and a religion of peace these people are said to be following.

                              Why the hell does he wear a western suit then ? Will he stop using all western inventions then ? A.Q.Khan , were was he educated ?

                              Comment

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