Author: James Bone
Publication: The Times, London
Date: December 20, 2002
A Pakistani scientist approached
Iraq soon after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to offer nuclear weapon designs
and help in procuring bomb components, according to a document found by
United Nations weapons inspectors.
The revelation, which provoked an
inconclusive inquiry by inspectors, has raised new concerns about Pakistan's
role in the proliferation of nuclear technology. It follows allegations
that Pakistan helped North Korea to develop a nuclear bomb and that Pakistani
nuclear scientists met Osama bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Muhammad
Omar, in Afghanistan.
The offer by the Pakistani scientist,
found in Iraqi archives, was made in October 1990 as a US-led coalition
prepared to repel the August invasion of Kuwait. Iraq had already embarked
on a crash programme to develop a nuclear bomb, but told the UN it had
not pursued the scientist's offer - a claim UN investigators are inclined
to believe. The document revealing the contact between the scientist and
Iraq is referred to twice in the Iraqi declaration of its nuclear capability,
which The Times has obtained.
The file first came to the attention
of UN weapons inspectors after the 1995 defection of President Saddam Hussein's
son-in-law, General Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of Iraq's secret weapons
programmes. After he defected to Jordan, Iraqi officials led UN inspectors
to a cache of 1.5 million pages of documents hidden in packing crates at
General Kamel's chicken farm in Iraq, the Haider House Farm, in an apparent
effort to get rid of incriminating evidence that they assumed he would
provide to Western intelligence.
Among them was a file of correspondence
between Iraq's Mukhabarat secret service and Department 3000 of the Iraqi
Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), a secret Iraqi nuclear programme that
was codenamed Petro-Chemical 3.
"Included was a few pages relating
to an approach made by a foreign national who offered assistance, for financial
reward, in nuclear weapon design and in the procurement of material that
may be required," Iraq's declaration says. "The Iraqi team pointed out
to the International Atomic Energy Agency Action Team (IAEA AT) that no
external assistance was received by the former Iraqi nuclear programme,
other than that already declared to the (team) and is documented."
A source familiar with the case
said that the document identified the scientist as a Pakistani. The handwritten
paper seems to be a record of a meeting between him and an Iraqi contact.
"He made the unsolicited offer to a contact of the Mukhabarat procurement
network and there was a communication between the Mukhabarat and Department
3000, where IAEC procurement was handled," the source said.
The document triggered an investigation
by UN nuclear inspectors, who approached Pakistan. Islamabad told them
it could not identify the scientist, but some UN Security Council diplomats
suspect that Pakistan does know who it is. Inspectors thought that the
matter was important enough to brief the five permanent members of the
Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States
- on their 1997 inquiry. Evidence of contact between a Pakistani scientist
and Iraq will only fuel fears that Pakistan is willing to share its technology
with so-called "rogue nations". The US suspects Pakistan of having supplied
North Korea with gas centrifuge technology to make weapons-grade uranium
for its nuclear bomb in 1997/98.
