The following piece by Chiocci of Il Giornale is incredible. Not only was the controversial «father» of Pakistan’s nuclear program in Niamey at the very same time Saddam’s emissaries were present but he had been running a «nuclear DIY Gran Bazaar» under the noses of the French Secret Services. Chiocci’s article is yet another piece of a puzzle that is becoming more and more complex by the day. A puzzle that raises a number of questions as to who knew exactly what and when.

-- ARTICLE BEGINS -- Uranium from Niger for the Islamic Atom Bomb By Gian Marco Chiocci Washington, November 30, 2005 The controversial «father» of Pakistan’s nuclear program was in Niamey the very same days in which Saddam’s emissaries were present.

The network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan is a complex puzzle of shadow companies, straw men, university brains, religious individuals, businessmen, military and spies belonging to a government that continues to claim that it knows nothing, has never known anything, about the traffic of centrifuges and know-how linked to the Islamic bomb. Despite the arrest of the dispenser of atomic favours the organisation can still boast of ties throughout the world, but it’s in Africa, host to Islamic fundamentalism, that the situation seems to have escaped the 007’s in their search for suppliers of primary material, missile components and technology for the construction of weapons of mass destruction. A recent intelligence lead takes us back to Niger, where Khan was a welcomed guest of the government and where his intermediaries continue to do business, the very same who in 1999 made a fool of the French Secret Services charged with monitoring – through the multinational Cogema – the uranium mines from which some years before were able to illegally export 1,200 tons of yellow cake (yellow uranium oxide from which gas is extracted to be applied in centrifuges in order to be enriched) to Libya. The very same Khan – according to official International Atomic Energy Agency data – bought a part of the 450 tons of stored in Libya in exchange for arms and petrodollars to finance Islamabad’s nuclear program. Khan worked for Pakistan and for anyone else looking for the precious pieces with which to make an atomic bomb. Businessmen from Niger and the «architect» of the Islamic Bomb turn up in the notes of the secret services who some time back indicated, amongst other things, the attempts made by Saddam’s emissaries to buy uranium from Niamey in the very same period in which, in Nigers capital, the Old Man of the DIY nuclear device, Khan, was present. As was seen in Niger-gate the final report of the British Parliaments Commission, in July 2004, pointed out the passage in Niger of Iraqi officials in 1999 and mentions sellers of uranium who in 1999 and 2001 planned to sell uranium to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq. This information is in part similar to Ambassador Wilson’s report. The information puts Khan in Niger in that period, detailing how his scientific court, installed in the hall of the Grand Hotel du Niger, gave appointments to local emissaries and clients from every imaginable country on a daily basis. Appointments where information, money and encrypted documents exchanged hands. Secret Informative notes refer in detail to how Khan and his scientific council made a series of visits to Niger and to the Direction of the Pakistani nuclear site of Khauta, visits made in February. In 1998, and above all 1999, a series of encounters defined by nuclear anti-proliferation experts as highly suspect, were held in Niamey. It was here that the «doctor» had his atomic shopping base, the very same base as was used for trips to Sudan, Nigeria, Dubai, Casablanca (where he was received by the ambassador Kakar), Bamako or Timbuktu in Mali (February 98, Hotel Hendrina Khan), Chad where in February he visited the Shifa centre which had just been bombed by the Americans. Again in February a visit to Mauritania where contacts are made with officials of the Republic of Congo and Somalia, countries evidence by the Cia to the White House before the declarations made by George W. Bush in regards to Iraq, declarations in which the President mentions Africa, and not Niger, as the place in which Saddam was desperately seeking uranium. While Rocco Martino was putting his hands on documents that evidenced agreements between the Niger government and Iraq for the supply of uranium at the very same time, and up until well into 2000, the strangest people on the earth were busy visiting Niger’s ‘Gran Bazar’ with Khan. All of the intelligence agencies discovered the father of the Islamic Bomb seeking out money to satisfy the requirements of all those countries intentioned on counterbalancing Israel’s nuclear deterrent. Between one trip and another Khan appeared again in Niger on February 22, 2000, he had been invited by the ambassador Brig Nisare. Khan arrived from Timbuktu, he had stopped over in Dubai where he remained with his right-hand-man Bukari Saied Abu Tair. After the time necessary to meet with his men he left on the 24 for Sri Lanka with Nairobi, Kenya, as a final destination. In fifteen days, on average, Khans visited ten African countries always returning to Niger because – as was later discovered – his laboratories in Pakistan were going ahead with atomic powder from the mines in Niger (Pakistan produced around 745 kilos of enriched uranium capable of producing 40 nuclear bombs each with a 2,000 km range) In 1999 Khan was discovered by the 007’s between Niger and Nigeria looking for fuel for a Chinese reactor. From 1999 until today Khan’s network has suffered a series of setbacks but, according to intelligence analysts, in Africa’s fundamentalist countries Khan is continuing to function using lesser means: the work of the mediators is finding fertile ground in the trafficking of double use components that are, apparently, destined to civil use but in reality destined to the enrichment of uranium for military purposes. -- ARTICLE ENDS --

Niger guards get nuclear training

Country at center of CIA leak case

NIAMEY, Niger (Reuters) -- Customs and border guards in Niger, the African country named in a U.S. intelligence scandal over alleged Iraqi uranium purchases, are being trained to fight the smuggling of nuclear materials, the government said.

International Atomic Energy Agency specialists, along with local experts, were giving a three-day course this week in the African uranium producer on the risks of handling radioactive material and how to detect trafficking of nuclear substances.

Citing intelligence reports that have since been widely discredited, U.S. President George W. Bush referred in a 2003 State of the Union address to alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger. This speech, which Bush's critics say was deliberately misleading, made the case for war against Iraq.

The so-called Niger dossier is at the center of a high-profile investigation in the United States over the leak of a covert CIA agent's identity to the media.

Niger's Public Health Minister Ary Ibrahim said at the opening of the nuclear security course in Niamey on Wednesday that one of its aims was to improve cooperation to control illegal trafficking of nuclear materials like uranium.

"Their importance in the socio-economic development of our country should not make us lose sight of the risks which can derive from handling them," he said.

Niger exports around 3,000 tons of uranium a year, mostly to France, Japan and Spain.

Wilson based his criticism in part on a CIA-sponsored mission he made to Africa in 2002 to check reports that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. Wilson said the reports were unsubstantiated and later accused the White House of leaking the identity of his covert CIA agent wife in retaliation.

The IAEA has said the documents the United States cited to back its allegations that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger were false.

Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/12/01/niger.nuclear.ap

Bush's 2003 speech mentioning Niger led to public criticism by a former U.S. career diplomat, Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of twisting intelligence to bolster the case for war on Iraq.

Bush did not mention Niger in his speech!! Freepers are better reporters than Reuters.

Instead of lying, why don't they do some research and tell the public the truth which is that the Clinton Administration knew Iraq was trying to buy Uranium as far back as 1997.

I posted the story here.

Saddam's Shadow-The Clinton Adminitration knew about Iraq Uranium Africa Energy & Mining | June 18, 1997 | Indigo Publications

Saddam's Shadow Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997
Copyright 1997 Indigo Publications Africa Energy & Mining
June 18, 1997
SECTION: MINING; DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO; N. 207 LENGTH: 787 words
HEADLINE: Saddam's Shadow

BODY: It's not only diamonds and base metals that interest big mining companies and the latter are not alone in being interested in Katanga. In the delegation that the United States sent to Kinshasa on June 2 under its ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, the state department's African affairs department was represented by Marc Baas, director for Central Africa. (Susan Rice, director for African Affairs at the National Security Council, has just been appointed under secretary of state for African affairs in succession to George Moose). Baas was accompanied by a representative of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and several Defense Department officials. The mission also visited Lubumbashi and met with officials from Gecamines and provincial authorities.

AEM's sources claim it wasn't the small research reactor that General Electric installed in 1977 at the university of Kinshasa, and which ceased operating in 1990, that interested the NRC and the military men, but rather the Shinkolobwe uranium deposit. Its resources are negligible from a commercial viewpoint when weighed against those in Namibia and Niger and new discoveries like France's Cogema has just made in western Canada. They weren't negligible from the security standpoint, however. The Americans are concerned over a visit to Katanga by the head of the Iraqi Baath party's international relations section, Shabi Al Maliki, around a year ago. He, too, showed an interest in Katanga's uranium, and last February another high-ranking Iraqi official reportedly held talks in Kinshasa with the mines minister in the last government of the Mobutu era, Banza Mukalay. The uranium is thought to have also figured in Libya's proposals in 1995 to supply oil to Zaire in exchange for ore.

Richardson said on June 7 that president Laurent Kabila had given permission for a UN mission to come to the country to investigate the plight of Hutu refugees starting from July 7. Richardson qualified the green light as "a breakthrough on the human rights and humanitarian front." For his part, Brian Atwood, director of U.S.AID, announced in Brussels on June 11 that potential donors would shortly meet for talks on aiding the Democratic Republic of Congo. But such assistance would be conditional on Congo respecting human rights, Atwood indicated. He added that Washington wanted the Kabila government to succeed because if it did not this could result in violence spreading to other countries. He issued an appeal to all governments to use their influence to halt atrocities which various reports indicate are occurring in the eastern part of the country. He said that "organized groups and independent groups" were attempting to strengthen their positions in the eastern regions.

South Africa, for its part, is putting together a team to advise Kabila on reconstructing the country and reorganizing its finances (AEM 205). Deputy president Thabo Mbeki said last week the team would be ready to leave within days and that its members would be chosen in agreement with the Congo government "to discuss a variety of matters that impact on the socioeconomic situation."

He added that Congo's leaders had asked that it consist of officials from South Africa's "Reserve Bank, the economic ministries and people dealing with infrastructure, public administration and so on." Officials said south Africa's foreign minister, Alfred Nzo, discussed Kinshasa's needs with Congo foreign minister Bizima Karaha at the recent Organization of African Unity summit in Harare. The South African mission will be headed by deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad.

LOAD-DATE: June 20, 1997

SBD

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.