Pakistani May Have Offered Iraq Nuke Aid
Excerpts from a story by DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer
orbat.com
UNITED NATIONS - A middleman claiming to represent the father of Pakistan's nuclear program offered Iraq help in building an atomic bomb on the eve of the Gulf War according to U.N. documents, diplomats and former weapons inspectors. While there was no indication Pakistan's government was involved in the offer, former inspectors who spoke on condition of anonymity said Pakistani officials were uncooperative when the U.N. nuclear agency tried in the mid-1990s to investigate whether the scientist was really behind the proposal. Pakistan denies any link to Pyongyang or Baghdad and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca last week said President Pervez Musharraf has given his assurance that nothing is being given to North Korea. Khan is in Pakistan and now serves as a special adviser to Musharraf. Calls for comment from Khan in Islamabad went unanswered Saturday.
U.N. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iraq didn't accept the offer and didn't mention it in its latest arms declaration. It also is not mentioned in a previous declaration which Iraq made in 1996 and which was recently seen by AP.
U.N. inspectors discovered the offer in 1995 amid more than 1 million Iraqi intelligence documents they found at an Iraqi storage facility. Among the documents was a letter, dated Oct. 6, 1990 - two months after Iraq had invaded Kuwait - in which Iraq's secret service wrote to Iraq's nuclear weapons department: "We've enclosed for you the following proposal from Pakistani scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, regarding the possibility of helping Iraq establish a project to enrich uranium and manufacture nuclear weapons." According to the letter, the Iraqis were told by a middleman that Khan was "prepared to give us project designs for nuclear bombs." The middleman would "ensure any requirements of materials from Western European companies, via a company he owns in Dubai," in the United Arab Emirates, it added. According to the letter, the motive was profit for the Pakistani nuclear scientist and the middleman.
Such sales and help would have violated U.N. sanctions, imposed after the Iraqi invasion, and international nuclear controls. The U.N. atomic agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says it has never identified the middleman because Iraq would not provide more details on the offer. The IAEA tried to track down Khan and interview him after they discovered the letter. But former inspectors on the team, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Pakistan repeatedly frustrated those attempts. Instead, Pakistan said it had investigated on its own and determined that the letter was a fraud by an individual with no connection to the government. |
