Posted on 02/08/2004 9:48:09 AM PST by DoctorZIn
WASHINGTON – As the Pakistani nuclear proliferation story widens, U.S. intelligence officials say top atomic scientists from that country met with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar in Afghanistan.
Two former senior Pakistani nuclear scientists who were based in the Afghan town of Kandahar met Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden several times before the fall of the Taliban. They were later detained and questioned on their return to Pakistan.
Last week, after it became clear that Pakistan was the center of what has become known internationally as the "nuclear bazaar," President Pervez Musharraf agreed to pardon nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan for selling the country's nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
Because Pakistan is perceived to be central to the U.S. war on terror, the reaction in Washington has been low-key.
"This is a matter between Dr. Khan, who is a Pakistani citizen, and his government," said Secretary of State Colin Powell to reporters outside the United Nations. "But it is a matter also that I'll be talking to President Musharraf about."
Bush administration officials have expressed satisfaction with Musharraf's guarantees that the country's nuclear proliferation will now come to an end.
A top defector from North Korea says that country's uranium-based nuclear weapons program was launched in 1996 under a deal with Pakistan. In addition, Pakistan stationed other nuclear scientists in Iran to help that country develop its nuclear weapons program.
Pakistan says the presidential pardon to the top nuclear scientist over his admission to have proliferated nuclear technology to three foreign countries is subject to set of a "comprehensive conditions" – but those conditions have not been revealed publicly.
The pardon even allows Khan to keep the vast wealth he accumulated by developing Pakistan's nuclear weapons and from selling the technology to other countries – including several rogue nations. Khan is believed to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funneled through bank accounts in the Middle East. His assets include four houses in Islamabad worth an estimated $2.8 million, a villa on the Caspian Sea, a luxury hotel in Mali and a valuable collection of vintage cars.
Khan, 69, last week made a televised confession of his wrongdoing after government investigators confronted him. Despite being granted a pardon, he is under house arrest and forbidden to give interviews.
In addition to selling nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea, Khan also offered Saddam Hussein a design for a nuclear weapon in 1990, according to a document seized by U.N. weapons inspectors. Later he made a deal with Libya.
China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation {CPMIEC)
The China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation {CPMIEC), a member of the New Era (Xinshidai), was established in 1980 to market the M-family of export missiles. It is also responsible for exports of liquid and solid rocket motors, precision machinery, optical equipment, radars and varietious surface-to-surface, shipborne, anti-ship, and tactical missiles. The company was sanctioned by the United States in August 1993 for missile proliferation, following its shipment of M-11 missiles to Pakistan in 1992- fas
Oh, boy....
Another song about Kerry should be done to the Duke of Plaza Toro's song "In Enterprise of Martial Kind" from Gilbert & Sullivan's Gondoliers.
The fund-raiser, Johnny Chung, told investigators that a large part of the nearly $100,000 he gave to Democratic causes in the summer of 1996 -- including $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee -- came from China's People's Liberation Army through a Chinese lieutenant colonel and aerospace executive whose father was General Liu Huaqing, the officials and lawyers said. General Liu was then not only China's top military commander but also a member of the top leadership of the Communist Party. Chung said the aerospace executive, Liu Chao-ying, told him the source of the money. At one fund-raiser to which Chung gained admission for her, she was photographed with President Clinton.
... While the amount described is a tiny part of the $194 million that Democrats raised in 1996, investigators regard the identification of Liu as a breakthrough in their long search for confirmation of a "China Plan." The hunt was prompted by secret telephone intercepts suggesting that Beijing considered covertly influencing the American elections.
... Chung met Liu in June 1996 in Hong Kong. She was not only a lieutenant colonel in the military, but a senior manager and vice president in charge of international trading for China Aerospace International Holdings Ltd., according to the company's 1996 annual report. The company is the Hong Kong arm of China Aerospace Corporation, a state-owned jewel in China's military industrial complex with interests in satellite technology, missile sales and rocket launches. Liu's father, General Liu, was China's senior military officer, and as vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission was in charge of China's drive to modernize the People's Liberation Army by selling weapons to other countries and using the hard currency to acquire Western technology. In that role, he oversaw his country's missile deals. In addition to his military role, General Liu was a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party, the very top circle of political leadership in China. He retired from his official positions last fall at the time of the Party's 15th Congress.
... In 1991 and 1993 the United States barred all American companies from doing business with two China Aerospace units who had made illegal missile sales to Pakistan. In each instance, Liu was assistant to the president of the sanctioned company.
...Those concerns were front and center in 1996, when General Liu was still in charge of the P.L.A. They included China's sale of missiles to Iran and of nuclear equipment to Pakistan, as well as its own bellicose military maneuvers near Taiwan. - New York Times, May 15, 1998
China has always had the strategy to proliferate missile and nucelar technology in response to the US' missile defense program.
A luxury hotel in Mali??
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