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Posted on 01/26/2004 1:01:03 PM PST by Mossad1967
Edited on 01/26/2004 2:18:02 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
By YURI BAGROV, Associated Press Writer
VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia - A car bomb exploded Tuesday night in a parking lot in Vladikavkaz, a southern Russian city near the war-ravaged Chechen Republic, killing at least one person and wounding several.
Heavy smoke filled the area as firefighters battled flames. The blast shattered glass in buildings near the lot, which was adjacent to a bank and about 200 yards from the city's central marketplace.
Federal Security Service spokesman in Moscow said a woman pedestrian was killed and several soldiers who were passing by in a truck were hurt.
The deputy head of the provincial security council, Alexander Burayev, said there was no immediate indication of whether the blast was related to the conflict in Chechnya.
Vladikavkaz is the capital of the province of North Ossetia, to the west of Chechnya, where separatist rebels and Russian forces have been fighting since 1999.
Russian officials have blamed previous bombings in the region on Chechen rebels.
A March 1999 bombing in the city's central market killed 55 people and wounded 168. Four men were convicted and given sentences up to life in prison for the bombing.
The group was also implicated in a May 1999 bombing at a military outpost that killed four and injured 17, a June 1999 blast in Vladikavkaz that injured 17 and the abduction of three Russian soldiers.
Tue Feb 3, 8:20 AM ET
MOSCOW - A small bomb went off near the apartment of a journalist who has criticized President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, and the journalist expressed fear she was targeted in the blast.
The explosives detonated Monday against the door of an apartment across the hall from the apartment of Yelena Tregubova, causing no casualties, Moscow police spokesman Kirill Gerasimenko said. The apartment was empty and nobody had lived there since 2000, he said.
Tregubova, a former Kremlin reporter who criticized the Putin administration in a book published last year, said she was in her apartment when the blast occurred.
"There was a very powerful explosion outside the door, I was shaken up as if during an earthquake," she told Ekho Moskvy radio.
In comments broadcast on NTV television, Tregubova said she suspected that her telephone was bugged and that the blast was aimed at her.
She said she feared that the device "was supposed to go off at the moment when I walked out, because I told the taxi service on the phone that I was about to go downstairs."
Police said the explosion was likely an act of "hooliganism," suggesting they did not suspect a political motive. "There was too little explosive and the device was too primitive for this to have been a terrorist act," Gerasimenko said.
Tregubova covered the Kremlin for several Russian newspapers starting in 1997, but was expelled from the Kremlin pool following Putin's March 2000 election. In her book "Tales of a Kremlin Digger," she accused the Putin administration of curbing freedom of speech.
By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The father of Pakistan's nuclear program told investigators he gave atomic weapons technology to other countries with the full knowledge of top army officials, including now-President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a friend of the scientist said Tuesday.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, also told the leader of the country's top Islamic party that he did not sign a confession about transfers of nuclear technology, as the government claims, the party said.
Khan spoke with Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of Jamaat-e-Islami, and told him he eventually will disclose his side of the story but, for now, his case "is in the court of God Almighty," party spokesman Ameer ul-Azeem said.
The party has called for a nationwide protest Friday to support Khan and other detained scientists.
Khan told a friend he had not violated Pakistan's laws by giving out-of-use machines for enriching uranium to Iran, North Korea and other countries, the friend told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
"Whatever I did, it was in the knowledge of the bosses," Khan's friend quoted him as saying.
The scientist also said that two former military chiefs — Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg and Gen. Jehangir Karamat — and Musharraf were "aware of everything" he was doing, the friend said.
"I am also convinced that (Khan) couldn't act unilaterally," the friend added.
Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan denied Musharraf was privy to any transfer of nuclear technology or authorized Khan to do it.
"It is absolutely wrong," Sultan said, adding that Musharraf "was not involved in any such matter. No such thing has happened since he seized power in 1999."
Musharraf has headed the army since 1998, and before that held a number of top positions in the military.
Khan, who gave Pakistan the Islamic world's first nuclear bomb, was removed Sunday from his post as scientific adviser to the prime minister after confessing to investigators he leaked nuclear secrets to other countries.
The admission shocked many in Pakistan, and raised questions about how the scientist could have spread nuclear technology without consent of the military — which has often ruled Pakistan since the country gained independence from Britain in 1947.
The two retired army chiefs, Karamat and Beg, told investigators they did not authorize nuclear transfers. Musharraf and other government officials have repeatedly ruled out official involvement in proliferation.
Officials said Tuesday that Khan smuggled high-tech centrifuges — used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons — and other equipment to Iran, Libya, North Korea and Malaysia through an international black market network.
In some cases, he used chartered planes to smuggle the equipment, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said two individuals, from Sri Lanka and Germany, operated on behalf of Khan in smuggling that began in the 1980s and continued at least until 1997.
Pakistan began probing allegations of nuclear proliferation in November after Iran and Libya gave information to the U.N. nuclear watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency.
So far, investigators have questioned two former heads of the army, scientists, engineers and security officials to determine whether they knew about the leak of nuclear technology to other countries.
Authorities are focusing on seven suspects — three scientists, including Khan, and four former security officials at Khan Research Laboratories, or KRL, a nuclear weapons facility named after Khan.
Investigators told Pakistani journalists Sunday that Khan did not sell nuclear technology for personal gain.
But two intelligence officials said Tuesday that money was a motivation.
"Definitely money was involved in this game," a senior intelligence official involved in the probe said on condition of anonymity.
Another official said on condition of anonymity, "For us, it was shocking that KRL's equipment was moved out of Pakistan, and we knew nothing. It was a misuse of authority, a breach of confidence and nothing else."
He said Khan "gave access to scientists and engineers from Iran and North Korea to our nuclear facilities" and met them outside the lab.
A close aide to Khan — Mohammed Farooq, who has been detained in the probe — was sent to Iran to help their scientists and was a key figure in the international nuclear black market, the official said.
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