'Khan's sale of nuclear tech helped Iran'(A.Q. Khan)

The Nation(Pakistan) ^ | ASIF MEHMOOD

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'Khan's sale of nuclear tech helped Iran'

ASIF MEHMOOD
LONDON - Pakistan’s nuclear scientist AQ Khan clandestinely provided Iran with centrifuges, technical designs, components and an ‘address book’ of suppliers which helped Tehran to make significant advances in its secret nuclear programme, a leading London-based think-tank revealed on Wednesday.
“Khan probably had some signal, if not explicit permission, from his superiors for nuclear cooperation with Iran,” the International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its Strategic dossier “Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, AQ Khan and the rise of proliferation networks” released on Wednesday. 
“However, no evidence has yet emerged that a clear directive was ever given to Khan to provide nuclear technology to Iran,” the dossier stated.
This dossier is the fourth in a series, which has included similar publications assessing the strategic weapons programmes of Iraq, North Korea and most recently Iran, published in September 2005.
While addressing the launching ceremony at IISS headquarters in central London, the Director General of the institute Dr John Chipman said that new dossier retains the proliferation focus, analytical rigour and methodology of these previous publications, but differs in important ways. Most significantly, the focus of this study is not one country, but the global problem of proliferation networks and nuclear black markets, he added. 
In this dossier, he further said the term ‘nuclear black market’ denotes the trade in nuclear-related expertise, technologies, components or material that is being pursued for non-peaceful purposes and most often by covert or secretive means. Often the trade is not explicitly illegal, but exploits loopholes in national export regulations. ‘Black’, in this case, often means shades of grey.
He said that some nuclear black market activity has been well-documented by various sources, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the press. 
Some countries are reluctant to share information on illicit activities within their borders or involving their citizens. Where information is too fragmentary to make a firm judgement, we have made this clear. 
Dr Chipman said that by recognising the open questions, the have tried to present a balanced and cautious set of assessments on nuclear black markets. These include a history and overview of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and its imports; an analysis of A Q Khan’s proliferation activities involving Iran, North Korea and Libya; a review of the involvement of other states in the nuclear black market; an examination of the reforms made by Pakistan and the efforts undertaken by the international community to prevent the reoccurrence of another proliferation network; and an assessment of illicit trafficking in radioactive materials, he added. 
The Director of the IISS said that Pakistan’s motivation to acquire nuclear weapons was sparked in large part by competition with India. Although the seeds of Pakistan’s weapons programme can be traced back to the early 1960s, the major boost came in December 1971 after Pakistan’s traumatic defeat by India, he added. 
Embitterment over the loss of East Pakistan also provided a psychological motivation to Dr A Q Khan to offer his services to his home country by stealing enrichment technology from his workplace in the Netherlands. With that boost, it took Pakistan only ten years to reach the point where it could produce a nuclear weapon, despite the withdrawal of nuclear assistance from Western countries. 
Dr Chipman said that A Q Khan has been described incorrectly as ‘the father of the Pakistani bomb’, which exaggerates his contribution. Khan’s mission was to provide Pakistan with an indigenous capability to produce the enriched uranium required for an atomic bomb. After India’s nuclear explosion in 1974, supplier countries became much more reluctant to sell sensitive technology to states suspected of harbouring nuclear ambitions. Part of Khan’s mission therefore was to circumvent increased controls on technology so Pakistan could obtain the imports it required to feed its nuclear programme. 
He said that many of the techniques Khan perfected were replicated by other proliferating states. Pakistan has not been the only country to engage the private sector in nuclear technology to further a military programme. Others include Iraq, Iran, North Korea and, to a lesser degree, India. These countries have all relied on similar methods of black market procurement, including systematically using the country’s foreign embassies, paying a premium over the market price, using multiple connections and buyers to search for a given item, using front companies, falsifying end users, and altering product specifications so they would appear to operate below the international guidelines. Iraq, Pakistan and Iran all made extensive use of free ports, some of which have since tightened controls, while others still have a long way to go. 
The IISS head said that from the outset, Pakistani governments gave A Q Khan a remarkable degree of authority and autonomy, partly because of the highly sensitive nature of his work, and partly because he was able to achieve tangible results. 
“Concerns about foreign intelligence operations targeting Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and the increased secrecy and compartmentalisation that resulted, allowed Khan to operate more independently. An unhealthy rivalry with other Pakistani nuclear organisations contributed to even greater secrecy and shady business practices. Unquestioned, Khan began to order many more components than Pakistan’s own enrichment programme required,” the dossier said.
He said that as Pakistan shifted to a more advanced centrifuge design during the 1980s, Khan was left with an excessive inventory of older centrifuges and components that gave him and his foreign-based partners the opportunity for a more profitable business model by exploring export markets. 
Some details concerning exactly what Iran received are still uncertain and what is clear is that Khan’s sales helped Iran to make significant advances in its clandestine nuclear programme, he said. 
The report said the small number of centrifuges would have been insufficient to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, and along with the centrifuge designs Khan provided, however, they gave North Korea a template on which to base their own centrifuge production plans. As with the Iranians, Khan also reportedly provided a ‘shopping list’ to the North Koreans, which enabled Pyongyang to purchase additional components directly from other foreign suppliers, it added. 
The IISS DG said the successive Pakistani governments have insisted that their country’s ballistic missile cooperation with North Korea was based on a cash payment, and that there was no official nuclear-for-missile technology exchange. Khan may have acted largely on his own volition, for his own profit. The broad cooperation between Pyongyang and Islamabad, however, is significant reason to suspect state complicity, at least in terms of having knowledge of and thereby implicitly condoning the centrifuge deal. 
The dossier said an official Pakistani nuclear connection with Iran and North Korea can be logically discerned, but the A Q Khan network’s cooperation with Libya is more puzzling, unless understood as a straight business deal.
About the Pakistan’s reforms, Dr Chipman said that whatever reasons led Pakistani leaders to ignore, acquiesce in, and in some cases possibly abet Khan’s nuclear-related sales, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 dramatically changed the dynamic, forcing President Musharraf to ensure that his country was not on the wrong side of the United States. Many of Pakistan’s internal reforms since 2001, and then following Khan’s confession and confinement to house arrest in 2004, have been transparent and appear to have worked well, he added. 
A robust command-and-control system is now in place to protect Pakistan’s nuclear assets from diversion, theft and accidental misuse, he sated, adding that Khan and his known group are out of business and Khan Research Laboratories is now confined exclusively to enrichment work, and these steps go some way towards overcoming the international opprobrium and label of irresponsibility that Pakistan earned as a result of the Khan saga. 
Dr Chipman said fears that the India-US nuclear cooperation agreement will free up Indian domestic uranium for additional weapons purposes gives Pakistan an additional motivation to continue to produce weapons-grade fissile material of its own. 
On International reforms, he said that in failing to exact harsh punishment on the domestic end of Khan’s black market network, Pakistan is hardly exceptional. Most of Khan’s foreign accomplices remain free and only three have been convicted and imprisoned. 
About the conclusions the IISS Director General said that past Pakistani government knowledge of and even involvement in A Q Khan’s secondary proliferation activities remains open to debate. 
Online adds: Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam, while rejecting the allegations levied on Pakistan by the British think tank, has said that all such statements and reports need to be supported by lucid arguments and sound proofs before they are published.
Pakistan took all possible steps to bring peace and quiet to FATA and the tribal areas besides arresting Al-Qaeda top brass. She said this while talking to a private TV channel the other day (Wednesday). 
She said that the British think tank report alleging the presence of Al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan was deplorable and without proper proofs and reasons to believe. She also said that if the State Department had any such information on which the report had been based, it should have been shared with Pakistan or at least with their own secret agencies.

[VaBthang4]

Of course it did....this is not news.

[Brian Mosely]

[magslinger]

[Joe Boucher]

Just ONE of many reasons not to believe in or trust our C.I.A.,
Why didn’t they and haven’t they offed this mooselimb nuclear prolifiter?
Thought their job was to keep us safe, not to help other boogie men to keep the military industrial complex funded?