Author: Joby Warrick and Peter
Slevin
Publication: Washington Post
Date: February 15, 2004
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42692-2004Feb14.html
Introduction: Pakistanis Resold
Chinese-Provided Plans
Investigators have discovered that
the nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling
network originated in China, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation
that stretched across the Middle East and Asia, according to government
officials and arms experts.
The bomb designs and other papers
turned over by Libya have yielded dramatic evidence of China's long- suspected
role in transferring nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s, they
said. The Chinese designs were later resold to Libya by a Pakistani-led
trading network that is now the focus of an expanding international probe,
added the officials and experts, who are based in the United States and
Europe.
The packet of documents, some of
which included text in Chinese, contained detailed, step-by-step instructions
for assembling an implosion-type nuclear bomb that could fit atop a large
ballistic missile. They also included technical instructions for manufacturing
components for the device, the officials and experts said.
"It was just what you'd have on
the factory floor. It tells you what torque to use on the bolts and what
glue to use on the parts," one weapons expert who had reviewed the blueprints
said in an interview. He described the designs as "very, very old" but
"very well engineered."
U.S. intelligence officials concluded
years ago that China provided early assistance to Pakistan in building
its first nuclear weapon -- assistance that appeared to have ended in the
1980s. Still, weapons experts familiar with the blueprints expressed surprise
at what they described as a wholesale transfer of sensitive nuclear technology
to another country. Notes included in the package of documents suggest
that China continued to mentor Pakistani scientists on the finer points
of bomb-building over a period of several years, the officials said.
China's actions "were irresponsible
and short-sighted, and raise questions about what else China provided to
Pakistan's nuclear program," said David Albright, a nuclear physicist and
former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. "These documents also raise questions
about whether Iran, North Korea and perhaps others received these documents
from Pakistanis or their agents."
The package of documents was turned
over to U.S. officials in November following Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's
decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction and open his country's
weapons laboratories to international inspection. The blueprints, which
were flown to Washington last month, have been analyzed by experts from
the United States, Britain and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy
Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Weapons experts in Libya also found
large amounts of equipment used in making enriched uranium, the essential
ingredient in nuclear weapons. That discovery helped expose a rogue nuclear
trading network that officials say funneled technology and parts to Libya
as well as Iran and North Korea. A central figure in the network, Pakistani
metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, acknowledged in a televised confession
last month that he had passed nuclear secrets to others. Pakistan's president,
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, then pardoned Khan.
Of the many proliferation activities
linked to Khan's network, the selling of weapon designs is viewed as the
most serious. The documents found in Libya contained most of the information
needed to assemble a bomb, assuming the builder could acquire the plutonium
or highly enriched uranium needed for a nuclear explosion, according to
U.S. and European weapons experts familiar with the blueprints. At the
same time, one of the chief difficulties for countries trying to build
nuclear weapons has been obtaining the plutonium or uranium.
Libya appeared to have made minimal
progress toward building a weapon, and had no missile in its arsenal capable
of carrying the 1,000-pound nuclear device depicted in the drawings, the
officials said. However, weapons experts noted, the blueprints would have
been far more valuable to the other known customers of Khan's network.
"This design would be highly useful
to countries such as Iran and North Korea," said Albright, whose Washington-based
Institute for Science and International Security has studied the nonconventional
weapons programs of both states. The design "appears deliverable by North
Korea's Nodong missile, Iran's Shahab-3 missile and ballistic missiles
Iraq was pursuing just prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War," he said.
Such a relatively simple design
also might be coveted by terrorist groups who seek nuclear weapons but
lack the technical sophistication or infrastructure to build a modern weapon,
said one Europe-based weapons expert familiar with the blueprints. While
such a bomb would be difficult to deliver by air, "you could drive it away
in a pickup truck," the expert said.
The device depicted in the blueprints
appears similar to a weapon known to have been tested by China in the 1960s,
officials familiar with the documents said. Although of an older design,
the bomb is an implosion device that is smaller and more sophisticated
than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War
II. Implosion bombs use precision-timed conventional explosives to squeeze
a sphere of fissile material and trigger a nuclear chain reaction.
Pakistan's first nuclear test in
1998 involved a more modern design than the one sold to Libya. Albright
said the Libyan documents "do not appear to contain any information about
the nuclear weapons Pakistan has built."
The documents at the center of the
investigation were handed over to IAEA inspectors in two white plastic
shopping bags from a Pakistani clothing shop. The shop's name -- Good Looks
Tailor -- and Islamabad address were printed on the bags in red letters.
One of the bags contained drawings and blueprints of different sizes; the
other contained a stack of instructions on how to build not only a bomb
but also its essential components.
The documents themselves seemed
a hodgepodge -- some in good condition, others smudged and dirty; some
professionally printed, others handwritten. Many of the papers were "copies
of copies of copies," said one person familiar with them. The primary documents
were entirely in English, while a few ancillary papers contained Chinese
text. The package also included open-literature articles on nuclear weapons
from U.S. weapons laboratories, officials familiar with the documents said.
Strikingly, although most of the
essential design elements were included, a few key parts were missing,
the officials and experts said. Some investigators have speculated that
the missing papers could have been lost, or hadn't yet been provided --
possibly they were being withheld pending additional payments. Others suggested
that the drawings were simply thrown in as a bonus with the purchase of
uranium-enrichment equipment -- "the cherry on the sundae," one knowledgeable
official said.
Libyan scientists interviewed by
international inspectors about the designs said they had not seriously
studied them and were unaware that anything was missing. As Libya had no
suitable missile or delivery system for a nuclear weapon, the scientists
might have decided to delay work on bomb designs until other parts of their
weapons program were further advanced, one knowledgeable U.S. official
said.
U.S. and European investigators
said there were many similarities among the other nuclear-related designs
and components found in Libya and Iran, suggesting they were provided by
the same network.
As for who delivered the material
to the Libyans, a European official who has studied the question said the
connection to the Khan network was indirect. "The middleman is quite invisible.
The middleman has covered his tracks very well."
