Posted on 01/04/2004 4:42:51 PM PST by blam
Nuclear weapon 'brochure' adds to US dilemma over Musharraf
By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 05/01/2004)
Pakistan faced embarrassment yesterday with the publication of a sales brochure from its top-secret nuclear facility, apparently hawking technology and components to would-be nuclear powers.
The brochure from the AQ Khan Research Laboratories, the centre of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, has an official-looking seal on the cover saying "Government of Pakistan".
Nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan
Its publication in The New York Times yesterday undercuts Islamabad's claims that any transfer of its nuclear technology to rogue states has been the work of individuals.
It also highlights the dilemma of President George W Bush's administration over how to tackle a country that is an ally in the fight against global terrorism and yet also increasingly appears to be at the centre of the murky world of nuclear proliferation.
Pakistan last month conceded that its technology and expertise may have helped the nuclear programmes of "rogue" states, including Iran and North Korea and possibly Libya, but blamed this on individuals motivated by "ambition or greed".
Yesterday's leak, on the eve of important talks between India and Pakistan, prompted speculation in Pakistan that it was deliberately timed to put pressure on President Pervaiz Musharraf to make concessions over the long-running dispute over Kashmir.
The brochure carries a photograph of the "father" of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and will once again draw attention to the shadowy international marketing role of the mastermind of Pakistan's three-decade-old nuclear project.
Mr Khan was formerly a leading figure at the Khan Research Laboratories in Kahuta, where Pakistan's own bomb was developed. This has been linked to the transfer of nuclear expertise and technology to Iran in the 1980s and 1990s and North Korea as recently as 2002.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said last month that Mr Khan was one of four nuclear scientists being "debriefed" after Iran told the United Nations nuclear watchdog that it obtained uranium enrichment centrifuges, a vital part of nuclear weaponry, from Pakistan in the late 1980s.
Mr Khan, who is believed to have visited North Korea 13 times since 1997, is a hero in Pakistan and his history of religious statements has led to his lionisation by the Islamist parties that snap at Gen Musharraf's heels.
"All Western countries," Mr Khan was once quoted as saying, "are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam."
According to The New York Times, before Pakistan tested its first bomb in 1998, Mr Khan and his colleagues began publishing papers on making and testing uranium centrifuges that in the West would have been deemed highly classified.
Administration officials have long repeated claims by their Pakistani counterparts that their nuclear export industry, if it ever existed, is now over.
But the publication of the brochure further undermines the credibility of those assurances.
Mr Bush has made the fight against nuclear proliferation a goal of his presidency but, like his three predecessors, has shrunk from criticising Pakistan for fear of destabilising an ally. He has never cited Pakistan's laboratories in the context of proliferation and publicly remains stalwart in his support for Gen Musharraf.
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