January 22, 2003	Wednesday	Ziqa’ad 18, 1423

WASHINGTON: Pakistan has once again been accused of sharing nuclear technology with North Korea.

In a scathing article published in its latest issue, an influential American magazine, “The New Yorker” refers to a CIA report the agency submitted to the US government last June.

The CIA report, the magazine says, alleges that Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information, and weapons-testing data with North Korea.

“Pakistan, one of the Bush administration’s important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb,” says Seymour M. Hersh, who authored the article, The Cold Test.

In 1985, North Korea signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which led to the opening of most of its nuclear sites to international inspection. By the early 1990s, it became evident to American intelligence agencies and international inspectors that the North Koreans were reprocessing more spent fuel than they had declared, and might have separated enough plutonium, a reactor by-product, to fabricate one or two nuclear weapons.

The resulting diplomatic crisis was resolved when North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, entered into an agreement with the Clinton administration to stop the nuclear-weapons programme in return for economic aid and the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors that, under safeguards, would generate electricity.

North Korea is economically isolated; one of its main sources of export income is arms sales, and its most sought-after products are missiles. “And one of its customers has been Pakistan, which has a nuclear arsenal of its own but needs the missiles to more effectively deliver the warheads to the interior of its rival, India,” says the report.

In 1997, according to the CIA report, Pakistan began paying for missile systems from North Korea in part by sharing its nuclear-weapons secrets.

According to the report, Pakistan sent prototypes of high- speed centrifuge machines to North Korea. And sometime in 2001 North Korean scientists began to enrich uranium in significant quantities. Pakistan also provided data on how to build and test a uranium-triggered nuclear weapon, the CIA report said.

Hersh says that an unnamed former senior Pakistani official told him that Pakistans contacts with North Korea increased dramatically in 1997; the Pakistani economy had foundered, and there was “no more money” to pay for North Korean missile support, so the Pakistani government began paying for missiles by providing “some of the know-how and the specifics.”

This October, after news of North Korea’s uranium programme came out, the New York Times ran a story suggesting that Pakistan was a possible supplier of centrifuges to North Korea.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s leader, attacked the account as “absolutely baseless,” and added, “There is no such thing as collaboration with North Korea in the nuclear area.” The White House appeared to take the Musharraf statement at face value. “In November, Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters he had been assured by Musharraf that Pakistan was not currently engaging in any nuclear transactions with North Korea,” says Hersh.

He quotes Powell as saying: “I have made clear to him that any...any Pakistan and North Korea we believe would be improper, inappropriate, and would have consequences. President Musharraf understands the seriousness of the issue.”