US wakes up to Osama's nuke dreams

US wakes up to Osama's nuke dreams CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA TIMES NEWS NETWORK ASHINGTON: Alarm bells are clanging in the US and other western establishments over reports that Osama Bin Laden may have acquired or developed crude atom bombs with help from renegade Pakistani nuclear scientists. Accounts of Bin Laden's pursuit of nuclear weapons has been in the air for some time, but they acquired an added urgency this week following the arrest in Islamabad of two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists whose activities in Afghanistan were being scrutinised by western intelligence agencies. The scientists were reportedly taken into custody for questioning by Pakistani authorities at Washington's behest.

According to reports from Islamabad, the two scientists -- Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudhury Abdul Majid -- have been "detained for questioning" by Pakistani authorities.

Proliferation experts in Washington say Mahmood and Majid are experts on plutonium technology. Mahmood is known for his contribution in setting up Pakistan's first "unsafeguarded" plutonium reactor in Khushab in central Pakistan. Majid is one of the few Pakistani scientists who had been trained at a plutonium facility in Belgium in the 1960s.

Majid worked with Mahmood for years, and they were both senior scientists in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Mahmood, who was project director of Pakistan's nuclear programme before its 1998 tests, reportedly resigned in protest against Pakistan considering signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Majid, who went on to become Director of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, retired last year.

Following their exit from the Pakistani nuclear establishment, the duo set up a non-governmental organisation for relief work and investment in Afghanistan. The NGO had close ties with the Taliban. The links had drawn the attention of US intelligence agencies that in turn alerted the Musharraf regime, which has been doing its best in recent months to convince Washington that its nuclear assets are safe.

Bin Laden's pursuit of nuclear weapons has been fairly well-chronicled. As early as 1993, a senior Bin Laden operative, Jamal al-Fadi, reportedly met a Sudanese military commander in Khartoum to negotiate the sale of a cylinder of enriched South African uranium. His operatives also tried to buy nuclear material through the Russian mafia and suitcase nuclear bombs through Chechen rebels.

The reports led the CIA Director George Tenet to publicly sound the alarm at a Senate hearing last year.

The role of Pakistani scientists has been less clear, although US experts have speculated about links between Islamabad and the Iraqi nuclear program. In Islamabad yesterday, Pakistani spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi said "authorities were only investigating Mahmood for his links with the Taliban through his relief agency, and not over concerns he may have passed on any government nuclear secrets."

But American analysts, shaken by the WTC carnage and the bio-terrorism attack, are less sure. "Available information suggests that, despite official statements to the contrary, the Pakistani government may not have full confidence in the security of its nuclear arsenal. Statements by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry that 'our [nuclear] assets are 100 percent secure, under multiple custody' are untested and lack credibility," experts at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, a thinktank that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in a threat assessment of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Aside the possibility of Bin Laden having acquired a suitcase nuclear device, experts here are fairly certain that he does not have the wherewithal to manufacture a full-fledged nuclear weapon. At best, he may be able to make a "dirty bomb," an improvised device that could be exploded to scatter radioactive plutonium without the fission that is involved in a full-scale nuclear weapon.

"The construction of a crude plutonium separation plant is easier than is often understood. The detained Pakistani scientists could have provided critical information and insights that would help Al Qaeda build a simple plutonium separation facility in Afghanistan," the ISIS said in a statement.

According to the London Times, British intelligence services are investigating a claim by a Bulgarian businessman that he was approached earlier this year by a middleman for Bin Laden seeking to obtain spent nuclear fuel rods from the Kozlodui nuclear power plant in Bulgaria.

The businessman was invited to Pakistan, where he was led to a secret location. A Pakistani scientist who described himself as a chemical engineer offered to pay $200,000 to help set up an environmental firm to buy nuclear waste. It was not immediately clear if the scientist was one of the two detained men.

In fact, the Times, quoting western intelligence sources, reported on Friday that Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network have already illegally acquired nuclear materials from Pakistan for possible use in their terrorism war against the West.

"The knowledge that Bin Laden has components for a nuclear weapons device is believed to lie behind the regular warnings from President Bush and Tony Blair that he would commit worse atrocities than the suicide assaults on New York and Washington if he were able to," The Times reported.

"They may also explain the speed with which the decision was taken to go after Bin Laden and his terrorist network, even if that meant toppling the Taleban regime in Afghanistan first," the paper added.

What is lending credence to the nuclear attack theory is the steady scaling up of strikes on American interests, starting with smaller kidnappings and bombings in the middle-east and Africa to the WTC catastrophe and the biological weapons attack.

There is a inevitable sense here that the next blow could be a chemical or nuclear strike.

Well I think we've put a tremendous effort into preventing drugs from flowing into the country, yet they still do, in huge quantities. Given that, it would seem to be a fairly trivial task for terrorists to get the components for a nuclear bomb here. That being said, what is our best defense against terrorists who are willing to do something like use a nuclear weapon against us? Honestly, I can't think of any that would actually work, other than trying not to give them reasons to do it. Which is why this "war" in Afghanistan, in which so far we've accomplished nothing other than angering a part of the world that already doesn't like us, seems like the wrong approach to be taking. I liked the method the CIA had a couple of years ago...train some middle easterners to infiltrate bin Laden's forces and take him out. That plan failed due to a change in Pakistani leadership, but why not try again, rather than throwing bombs all over hoping one happens to land on bin Laden (fat chance of that, I'd say). I'm not a peacenik...I want bin Laden, and anyone in his terrorist network dead. But I want it done in a way that has less of a chance of coming back to haunt us (and which might actually work, unlike the current campaign).

Ha! You beat me to it. ; )

here's more of interest:

1970s : (PAKISTANI SCIENTIST ABDUL QADEER KHAN WORKS FOR BRITISH/GERMAN/DUTCH CONSORTIUM URENCO) Abdul Qadeer Khan worked for Urenco in the 1970s. After his return to Pakistan in the 1980s was sentenced in absentia by an Amsterdam court to four years' jail for attempted espionage, a decision later overturned on appeal.- "Musharraf Says Appears Scientists Sold Secrets," Reuters, January 23 2004

1970s : (PAKISTANI SCIENTIST ABDUL QADEER KHAN STEALS BLUEPRINTS FOR URANIUM ENRICHMENT CENTRIFUGES : LATER HE WOULD DEVELOP THE ATOMIC BOMB aka 'ISLAMIC BOMB' FOR PAKISTAN WITH THE HELP OF THE COMMUNIST CHINA)The paper [The Observer- UK] also reiterated that Khan stole secret blueprints for two types of uranium enrichment centrifuges while working at Urenco, an Anglo-Dutch-German nuclear engineering consortium. He then went on to secretly develop atomic bomb with the help of the Chinese. - "Report: Iran, Libya, North Korea nuke links traced to Pakistan," by Vijay Dutt, Hindustan Times, January 18 2004

1980s : (THE NETHERLANDS : PAKISTANI SCIENTIST ABDUL QADEER KHAN IS SENTENCED IN ABSENTIA FOR ATTEMPTED ESPIONAGE) Abdul Qadeer Khan worked for Urenco in the 1970s. After his return to Pakistan in the 1980s was sentenced in absentia by an Amsterdam court to four years' jail for attempted espionage, a decision later overturned on appeal.- "Musharraf Says Appears Scientists Sold Secrets," Reuters, January 23 2004

1997 - 2003 : (PAKISTANI ATOMIC SCIENTIST ABDUL QADEER KHAN VISITS NORTH KOREA 13 TIMES) - "Nuclear Weapon 'Brochure' Adds To US Dilemma Over Musharraf," by Alec Russell in Washington, The Telegraph (UK), 1-5-2004

APRIL 2001 : (PAKISTAN : PRESIDENT MUSHARRAF FORCIBLY RETIRES ATOMIC SCIENTIST ABDUL QADEER KHAN & KHAN'S RIVAL, SAMAR MUBARAKMAND) Khan’s fall from grace under the military dispensation is traced by some experts to relentless American pressure that first resulted in Gen. Musharraf’s decision to forcibly retire him on his 65th birthday in April 2001, against his own wishes. Musharraf also retired Khan's main rival, Samar Mubarakmand, at the same time.
According to British writer Simon Henderson, who has extensively chronicled Pakistan’s nuclear shenanigans, American gripe against Khan goes back to the 1980s, when the nuclear scientist began putting his country on the nuclear map. - "Pakistan nuclear leak zeroes in on Dr Khan," by CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA , The Times of India , January 20 2004

2002 early : (SOUTH KOREAN AGENTS DISCOVER PAKISTAN-NORTH KOREA TRANSACTIONS INVOLVED WITH DEAL TO SWAP NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY) - "Report: Iran, Libya, North Korea nuke links traced to Pakistan," by Vijay Dutt, Hindustan Times, January 18 2004

2002 summer : (US SATELLITES SPOT PAKISTANI AIRCRAFT LOADING MISSILE PARTS IN NORTH KOREA) South Korean intelligence agents, it is said, discovered the transactions [Pakistan-North Koreadeal to swap nuclear technology] in 2002 and that summer US spy satellites photographed Pakistani cargo planes loading missile parts in North Korea. - "Report: Iran, Libya, North Korea nuke links traced to Pakistan," by Vijay Dutt, Hindustan Times, January 18 2004

JANUARY 20?, 2004 Monday : (STOLEN DUTCH CENTRIFUGE TECHNOLOGY NOT ONLY WENT TO IRAN & PAKISTAN, IT MAY ALSO HAVE BEEN TRANSFERRED LIBYA & NORTH KOREA BY PAKISTANI ABDUL QADEER KHAN, WHO HAD WORKED AT DUTCH COMPANY URENCO) Two government ministers in the Netherlands acknowledged Monday that highly sensitive nuclear technology developed by a Dutch company may have been transferred to Libya and North Korea along with Iran and Pakistan. The disclosure in Parliament in Amsterdam marked the first public confirmation of assertions that centrifuge technology for enriching uranium apparently found its way to Libya and North Korea. It was already known that Pakistan and Iran had the technology.
The Dutch officials, Foreign Minister Bernard Bot and Economic Affairs Minister Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst, said it was not clear how the potentially arms-related technology had been transferred. But diplomats elsewhere said the public comments were likely to increase pressure on Pakistan, which has already been linked to Iran's capability and is suspected of providing the technology to North Korea and Libya.
U.S. officials have long suspected that Abdul Qadeer Khan, who led the development of Pakistan's atomic bomb, stole the centrifuge secrets in the 1970s while working for the Dutch company Urenco. - Source : Excerpted - click for full article Source: http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jan/01202004/nation_w/130789.asp- "Dutch firm likely source of nuke info," LA Times via The Salt Lake Tribune, January 20 2004

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.