Pakistan nuclear case merely 'tip of an iceberg'

By Seattle Times news services

	Abdul Qadeer Khan
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The Khan case "raises more questions than it answers," said the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei.

He asserted that existing safeguards had failed and called for urgent international cooperation to police a global black market whose reach is still being explored.

"We need to know who supplied what, when, to whom. Dr. Khan was not working alone," ElBaradei said at his Vienna headquarters the day after Khan publicly admitted to delivering nuclear-weapons expertise and supplies.

The hunt for middlemen who worked with Khan has widened to Japan and Africa, diplomats said yesterday.

Suspects in Germany and two other European countries are also being investigated, they said.

ElBaradei said IAEA investigators are studying the allegation that one of Khan's representatives offered to provide Iraq with nuclear-bomb designs and uranium-enrichment equipment for $5 million. Iraqi authorities rejected the 1990 proposal as a scam shortly before the Persian Gulf War.

"Maybe in hindsight it was not a scam. But thank God they did not act on it," said ElBaradei.

ElBaradei's remarks reflect recent revelations about the vibrant black market in nuclear components uncovered in discussions with Iran and Libya. Both countries have revealed secret sources of supplies for programs long undetected by foreign intelligence services or international organizations.

The IAEA was among the outside institutions that passed information about the network to the Pakistani government.

	Pervez Musharraf

Pressed by the Bush administration, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ordered the detention and interrogation of senior weapons scientists who worked with Khan, often described as the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program.

In Washington, CIA Director George Tenet confirmed that Khan was at the center of the nuclear black market. He said U.S. and British intelligence had been tracking its movements for years.

"His network was shaving years off the nuclear-weapons-development timelines of several states, including Libya," Tenet said in a speech, adding that now "Khan and his network have been dealt a crushing blow."

Among items bought by Libya were engineer's drawings of a nuclear weapon, now under IAEA seal in the United States.

One of the diplomats said that drawing appeared to be of Chinese design, but cautioned against assuming it came directly from China.

"There are no fingerprints on the drawings which lead you to any specific country," he said.

China is widely assumed to have been Pakistan's key supplier of much of the clandestine nuclear technology that Khan used to publicly establish Pakistan as a nuclear power in 1998.

The U.S. is willing to accept Pakistan's handling of Khan's situation, plus the dismantling of his network, because it's preparing to launch an offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban elements along the Afghan border, say U.S. and Pakistan officials, in hopes of capturing Osama bin Laden.

If Musharraf's government were to be connected to Khan's nuclear deals, the U.S. might be forced under existing nonproliferation law to impose sanctions on Pakistan at a moment when it most needs the South Asian nation's help.

"The Bush administration does not want to put further pressure for conducting a very open investigation because Musharraf and the Pakistani army is a key ally, and it does not want to lose its ally," says Aisha Siddiqua, a defense analyst in Islamabad, Pakistan.

A Pakistani official in Washington confirms that the coming "spring offensive" against al-Qaida redoubts is now the priority and neither country wanted the Khan revelations to trouble pursuit of counterterrorist actions.

ElBaradei said evidence that a Malaysian company had produced sophisticated parts for enriching uranium raised worries about factories elsewhere peddling such goods outside the public eye.

Malaysian police said Scomi Precision Engineering manufactured components for Libya's fledgling nuclear program.

The parent company, whose principal shareholder is a son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, said the parts were ordered by a Dubai company, Gulf Technical Industries.

ElBaradei said the recent revelations demonstrate that informal rules designed to prevent suppliers from assisting nuclear-weapons aspirants are "kaput." Only 38 countries take part in the nuclear suppliers group, he said, and they are dominated by longtime industrialized nations. Many countries newly capable of producing finely tuned parts remain on the outside.

Compiled from The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company