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Pakistan Prepares to Send Nuclear Parts to IAEA
Pakistani officials are considering transferring uranium enrichment centrifuge components to Vienna, where international nuclear inspectors would conduct tests to learn more about Iran’s nuclear program, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 28). Pakistan confirmed recently that a nuclear smuggling network headed by the nation’s former top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had transferred centrifuges to Iran without government approval (see GSN, March 10; Farhan Bokhari, Financial Times, March 25). The testing results could support or undermine Iran’s assertion that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. A two-year investigation by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has found traces of nearly weapon-grade uranium in Iranian centrifuges, but Iranian officials have claimed the material was already in the equipment that it imported from the smuggling network, Reuters reported (Zeeshan Haider, Reuters, March 25). “To end this issue once and for all, we want to send nuclear centrifuges to Vienna for inspection,” said Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf (Bokhari, Financial Times). He cautioned the agency, however, not to consider the deal an open-ended invitation to inspect Pakistani equipment. “We have said, ‘OK, we will give them and you examine them,’” Musharraf said. “But once and for all, and after that, we’ve told them that once we do it, then don’t ask next time” (Haider, Reuters). The logistics of the transfer have not yet been worked out. “We are considering (the IAEA’s) request, for dispatch of such a component as a centrifuge which has no utility for our (nuclear) program,” said a Pakistani Foreign Ministry official. Nevertheless, “It’s no more a question of ‘if.’ It’s more a matter of how the centrifuge parts would be transported,” said one senior Western diplomat in Islamabad. The plan so far calls for the Pakistani equipment to be examined at the IAEA nuclear laboratory in Siebersdorf, outside Vienna, according to the diplomat (Bokhari, Financial Times). Meanwhile in Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied a Sunday Washington Post report charging the administration with playing down the role of the smuggling network when accusing North Korea of exporting nuclear material (see GSN÷ March 21). The Post report said that Bush administration officials had tried to build pressure on Pyongyang by telling Chinese and other regional officials that North Korea had shipped uranium hexafluoride to Libya, when in fact the shipment was made to the illicit nuclear network based in Pakistan. “Whether the intended recipient was the Khan network or Libya is irrelevant to our proliferation concerns regarding North Korea,” McClellan wrote in a letter to the Post. Calling the Post report “flat out wrong,” McClellan said, “Our allies were not ‘misled’ by the United States (McClellan letter, Washington Post, March 25).
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