NEW YORK, March 14: A classified intelligence report presented to the White House last week detailed for the first time the extent to which the Khan Research Laboratories allegedly provided North Korea with all the equipment and technology it needed to produce uranium-based nuclear weapons, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
The newspaper said the assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency confirmed the Bush administration's fears about the accelerated nature of North Korea's secret uranium weapons programme, which some intelligence officials believed could produce a weapon as early as next year.
The assessment is based in part on Pakistan's accounts of its interrogations of nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The report concluded that North Korea probably received a package similar to the kind the Khan network sold to Libya for more than $60 million, including nuclear fuel, centrifuges and one or more warhead designs.
