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Khan Nuclear Network Likely Offered Top Bomb-Making Secrets, Investigators Say
The underground nuclear network established by former top Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan is believed to have sold key engineering secrets for manufacturing nuclear warheads, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 16). Among documents recovered last year from Libya when the country abandoned its WMD programs were step-by-step manuals, some of which appear to have Chinese and Pakistani origins, said U.S. and international investigators. The Libyan documents and others submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency by Iran demonstrate that Khan had offered instructions on purifying uranium, casting it into a nuclear core and manufacturing specialized explosives, according to U.S. intelligence officials and European diplomats. Such secrets can take decades to master independently, scientists said. “The real secrets are in the details of the metallurgy, the manufacturing and the engineering,” said Siegfried Hecker, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico from 1986 to 1997 and now a senior fellow there. “It’s becoming clearer to us that Khan was selling a complete package,” said a senior U.S. official involved with nuclear strategy. “Not a turnkey operation — that would be overstating it — but close to it” (Broad/Sanger, New York Times, March 21). Meanwhile, experts from the Nuclear Suppliers Group — the 44 nations that voluntarily monitor exports of nuclear-related materials and equipment — are scheduled to visit Pakistan next month to assess Islamabad’s nuclear export control regime, Reuters reported Friday. Similar visits have recently been made to Israel, India and Egypt, said the group’s chairman, Richard Ekwall. While Islamabad recently expressed an interest in joining the group, Ekwall said that was unlikely to occur because Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state that has not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “One of the criteria for joining the NSG is that you adhere to the NPT,” Ekwall said. Proof of full compliance with NSG export controls is also necessary, according to Reuters (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, March 18).
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