Free Republic

Two Mississauga, Ont., men have been indicted for allegedly helping to run an international procurement network over a five-year period to traffic materials such as aircraft parts and satellite communications equipment to support Pakistan’s nuclear program. Father and son Muhammad Ahsan Wali, 48, and Haji Wali Muhammad Sheikh, 82, are among five men accused of being associated with an alleged front company called Business World, based in Rawalpindi, a city in northern Pakistan, according to the United States Department of Justice. The other three charged include another one of Sheikh’s sons in Pakistan, as well as one man in Hong...

Islamabad - China has provided a loan of Rs 136 billion for two nuclear power plants that Pakistan expects to commission by 2016, the state-run media reported today. The power plants of 340MW each are being built with Chinese assistance at the Chashma nuclear complex in Punjab province. The "construction of these power plants became possible after a long-standing agreement", official sources were quoted as saying by APP news agency. The total cost of the two plants is Rs 190 billion and they will be partially funded by a Chinese loan of Rs 136 billion, the sources said. The Pakistan...

A Chinese company has agreed to pay a penalty of $3 million after pleading guilty to the charges of illegally exporting high-performance coating to Pakistan's Chashma nuclear power plant, US federal authorities said. Headquartered in Nanjing, the Chinese firm Huaxing agreed to the maximum criminal fine of  $2 million, $1 million of which will be stayed pending its successful completion of five years of corporate probation. Huaxing was building Chashma II Nuclear Power Plant in Pakistan as part of a nuclear cooperation pact between China and Pakistan. Chashma II is owned by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, which is an...

The London accountant who accompanied Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to Timbuktu on three occasions in 1998, 1999 and 2000 says the 'father' of the Pakistani bomb witnessed the digging of a well, toured an ancient Islamic library and enjoyed the views of the desert. A remote outpost in the middle of the West African desert, Timbuktu usually attracts explorers associated in the popular mind with the adventures of the comic character Tin Tin. And Pakistani dissidents told rediff.com the reason for Khan's visit to Timbuktu, part of landlocked West African state of Mali, was to prospect for uranium. They say...

When experts from the US and the IAEA came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found themselves caught between gravity and pettiness. The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan's bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger, particularly since the Libyans...

(Islamabad/Moscow, October 25) There is now a nuclear dimension to the Afghan war. A second retired Pakistani atomic scientist was picked up by Islamabad on Tuesday night on the suspicion that he was developing a nuclear device for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The arrests followed tip-offs by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Pakistani authorities. Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood and Abdul Majeed, both scientists who had retired from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), were picked up after the FBI provided evidence of their links to jehadi outfits. The Pakistan Interior Minister, Moinuddin Haidar, said on ...

wo of Pakistan's top atomic scientists were grilled yesterday about possible contacts with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers amid reports Osama Bin Laden had obtained nuclear material. Sultan Bashiru-Din Mehmood, one of the founders of the country's nuclear program, was detained Tuesday in Lahore, Interior Ministry officials said on condition of anonymity. They said Abdul Majid, a scientist who worked with Mehmood at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, also was being held. "The investigation has nothing to do with the nuclear program," said Rashid Qureshi, a Pakistani military spokesman. However, the Interior Ministry officials said the men were questioned about possible links ...