Dr Qadeer suspected of links with ‘axis of evil’ states
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, Jan 7: The information that Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan has been offering nuclear and nuclear related technology to other nations is being circulated in Washington since early December.
Last month, Dawn received a copy of the pamphlet purportedly distributed by A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, offering vacuum technology for sale. The distributors said the technology can also be used in nuclear plants and thus the offer can be interpreted as promoting nuclear technology.
The pamphlet has a Rawalpindi address, P.O. Box 502, and has pictures of the equipment it promotes. It also has a picture of Dr Khan on the extreme right corner wearing the medals awarded by the government of Pakistan.
A message distributed with the pamphlet says: “Besides manufacturing of vacuum components and systems, our vacuum consultancy services are also available for system design, operational troubleshooting, quality assurance, maintenance, system development and human resource training.”
The distributors of the pamphlet seemed particularly concerned about the offer of “human resource training” because they claimed it was offering to train people for making a key component of a nuclear plant.
Information provided with the pamphlet said that in 1998, Ernest Piffl, managing director of the German firm GmbH near Stuttgart received a three-and-half-year sentence for illegally exporting thousands of performs for gas centrifuge scoops to Pakistan’s secret uranium enrichment programme.
Performs are partially finished cast or machined components and the ones sent to Pakistan were made of a special aluminium alloy and looked like small thin-wall pipes. Bending and finishing these little pipes would have been done at the point of assembly of the centrifuge.
This centrifuge technology that Dr Khan learned while working at a nuclear plant in Holland is the same as the vacuum technology the Kahuta lab was selling.
However, information provided in this and other similar reports appears mild compared to the Los Angeles Times story which proclaimed: “If one man sits at the nuclear fulcrum of the three countries President George W. Bush calls the ‘axis of evil’, it may well be Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.”
The story, published on Sunday, was picked by major news organizations and reproduced across the world, mostly on the front pages of influential newspapers.
The 66-year-old metallurgist was described as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb who, the report said, is a national hero at home, where hospitals bear his name and children sing his praises. But US and other Western officials do not.
They say Dr Khan is the only scientist known to be linked to the alleged efforts of North Korea, Iraq and Iran to develop nuclear weapons, the report said.
‘If the international community had a proliferation most-wanted list, A. Q. Khan would be most wanted on the list,’ said Robert Einhorn, who was assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation in the Clinton administration.
The report claims that US intelligence has long known of Dr Khan’s activities.
But the extent of his ties to all three ‘axis’ nations became public only recently as North Korea admitted resuming its nuclear weapons effort, satellite photos showed that Iran may be conducting clandestine nuclear work and Dr Khan’s name appeared in a letter offering to ‘manufacture a nuclear weapon’ for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Pakistan denies giving nuclear assistance to other countries and insists that the scientist has done no wrong.
But under intense US pressure, President Pervez Musharraf abruptly removed him as head of nuclear weapons development two years ago.
However, experts doubt that a maverick scientist working alone could have engineered such sensitive deals with so many governments.
The report quotes an Indian nuclear expert, Gaurav Kampani, telling the newspaper: “We know Khan has been to North Korea at least 13 times, perhaps more.” Mr Kampani is a nuclear expert at the Center for Non-proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
“It’s obviously been sanctioned by institutions within the Pakistani government,” he adds.
Dr Khan has shrugged off the charges.
“I built a weapon of peace, which seems hard to understand until you realize Pakistan’s nuclear capability is a deterrent to aggressors. There has not been a war in the last 30 years, and I don’t expect one in the future. The stakes are too high,” he said.
The report says that when Dr Khan ran Pakistan’s bomb-building programme, he reported directly to the nation’s leader and had funds at his disposal. US officials say he owns several palatial residences.
In 1986, Pakistan and Iran signed a nuclear cooperation agreement after Dr Khan visited Bushehr, a nuclear power plant that Teheran is building with Russian help.
US officials say it was Dr Khan who initiated talks with the North Koreans in 1992 to obtain 10 to 12 medium-range Nodong ballistic missiles to help Pakistan boost its military profile against India. In April 1998, Pakistan test-fired a knockoff Nodong missile renamed the Ghauri I. A month later, North Koreans attended Pakistan’s first nuclear tests, say European diplomats.
In exchange for the missiles, US and other officials say, Pakistan gave North Korea designs for Dr Khan’s gas centrifuges and other assistance needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
