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New
Delhi, 25
January 2004
Pakistani
President Musharraf is known to be a risk taker with grit and guile.
He is facing hot waters all round and even the Indian media is
coming round to accept that despite all his villain like actions in
Kargil, which was a calculated incursion, he is India' s best bet
for stability in the region. He is expected to sign a joint
agreement on terrorism and crime while meeting with officials on a
three day visit to Turkey. Musharraf, who lived in Turkey as a
youth, has welcomed the prospect of cooperation between the two
Islamic states, both of which have problems with hard line Islamic
militant groups. He seems as worried about Nuclear terrorism and
spread of WMDs as the whole world is, so the old connections of
Pakistan's nuclear scientists with N Korea, Iran and Libya are
coming out of the closet and even Dr. A Q Khan the father of
Pakistan's A- Bomb has been questioned along with his aide. Later
media reports from Pakistan said that Pakistan admitted that two of
their nuclear scientists had collaborated with Iran under tacit
approval of a former military president.
Towards the end of his trip he was reported as having
shaken hands with former Israeli PM Shimon Peres when they met in a
hotellobby in Davos. Peres reportedly invited Musharraf to visit
Israel to which he said he would definitely do so if diplomatic
relations between the two countries were established.
This
trip to Turkey by Prsident Musharraf should be militarily worth
watching and following up.
NATIONAL REVIEW MAGAZINE ONLINE
January 19, 2004, 9:57 a.m.
Link Leaks
The Iran-Pakistan Nuclear Story Continues To Unfold
By Simon Henderson
“My father told me that if ever anything happened to him, I was
to call you," said the plaintive, attention-grabbing voice of a
young Pakistani woman on the telephone to me Sunday. Her father, a
nuclear scientist, had been detained by Pakistan's feared
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). They had come in the evening and
told her father to pack a small bag, with personal articles
sufficient for a few days. Barely able to hold back the tears, she
passed me onto her brother. "There had been five or six
standing by the door and another three or so in a four-wheel-drive
vehicle and another car outside," he told me.
At least four men have been
arrested in the last few days, bringing my tally to a total of at
least seven scientists arrested since the beginning of December.
(One person over the weekend told me between 25 and 30 scientists
and other experts might have been detained so far.) The Pakistani
authorities have publicly acknowledged only a few of the detentions,
saying they are trying to work out whether "renegade nuclear
experts" have helped neighboring Iran develop a nuclear-weapons
program.
Why
phone me? I have written about Pakistan's nuclear-weapons endeavors
for more than 25 years. I have a variety of good contacts. The woman
who called me clearly thinks publicity could help her father and the
others. I previously wrote "Nuclear
Spinning: The Iran-Pakistan Link" in December for NRO, a
few days after the first arrests. It had been prompted by other
telephone calls.
The
story is bizarre. It is also probably true — although it is safe
to assume we have so far learned only a fraction of that truth. In
essence, the story is that Pakistani scientists, directly or
indirectly, allowed Iran to acquire centrifuges suitable for
enriching uranium. The centrifuges were discovered when
international inspectors visited Iran last year, much to the
embarrassment of President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military
leader turned dictator. Under pressure to cooperate with the U.S.
against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, Musharraf himself is
threatened by Islamic extremists, as two failed assassination
attempts in the last month testify. Iran's public nuclear-centrifuge
admission is giving Washington an excuse to hammer Pakistan for its
long history of reckless proliferation, previously thought to have
been in exchange for Chinese and North Korean assistance. But
whatever Musharraf might have known about Iran for years, first as a
senior general, and then as chief of army staff (the Pakistani army
is guardian of the country's nuclear project), he is now claiming
total ignorance — and innocence — as head of state.
The
arrested men all worked at the Khan Research Laboratories, a
uranium-enrichment plant outside the capital city of Islamabad. In
1981, the then military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, gave the plant
its current name in honor of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who created it
in the 1970s. This gesture was intended to annoy the United States,
and it did. What is going on now appears, in part, to be
Washington's revenge. Using the Iran-centrifuge scandal, Washington
can pressure Musharraf to shut down perhaps half of his
nuclear-weapons projects.
Khan
himself was retired on his 65th birthday in April 2001, against his
own wishes. President Musharraf, who had taken power in a military
coup in 1999, apparently was responding to U.S. demands. He also
retired Khan's main rival, Samar Mubarakmand, at the same time. Khan
had followed the highly enriched-uranium route to the bomb;
Mubarakmand's team had followed the plutonium route. Both groups
successfully tested devices in Pakistan's May 1998 nuclear blasts.
Both teams also separately worked on providing Pakistan with
missiles capable of carrying nuclear bombs. Khan's group acquired a
Nodong production line from North Korea — the missile is known as
the Ghauri in Pakistan, and is in operational service. The plutonium
team chose the Chinese M-11 missile, known in Pakistan as the
Shaheen.
Last
month the Pakistani government briefed a select few of its
journalists to report that rogue scientists had used German
go-betweens to sell their secrets to Iran. The scientists had also
been helped by two Sri Lankan businessmen in Dubai, the journalists
were told. "The [scientists] were motivated entirely by
money," went the briefing line.
Khan's
name did not appear in the subsequent reports, but it is clear that
Khan is considered the center of the web. He probably hasn't been
arrested himself only because he is a national hero. In Pakistan, he
is known as "the father of the Islamic bomb." But he has
been invited in for questioning nonetheless, most recently last
Saturday evening. It started at 6 P.M. and was not finished until
after 9 P.M. A friend who spoke to him later reported that, although
Khan said he was okay, he sounded exhausted.
Two
other men were detained around the same time: Major Islam ul-Haq,
Khan's personal staff officer, and Nazeer Ahmed, a director at KRL
with a British Ph.D., who was Khan's principal and closest aide in
the KRL headquarters for many years. The men arrested in December
had been linked to centrifuge production and purchases of equipment
from abroad. One, Saeed Ahmed, had been head of the
centrifuge-design office, another, Yasin Chohan, ran a production
line. Both have been released. A third, Farooq Mohammed, is still
detained; his family went to court last week to secure his release.
This week, they will learn the result — but they are not
optimistic. Legal niceties about habeas corpus take second place in
a military regime.
The
story could be bigger than just leaks of uranium-enrichment
technology. Two other men arrested last week, Abdul Majid and
Mansoor Alam (also directors at KRL), had both been directly
involved in the first 1998 nuclear test, watching from a distance
when a device using highly enriched uranium had been detonated under
the Chagai Hills in Pakistan's southwestern region.
But
to believe the storyline dictated so far by the Musharraf regime,
you have to believe that a group of scientists, motivated by
national glory (the quest for a bomb), was distracted by the
opportunity to earn a quick buck (selling secrets to Iran, a
potential enemy). The whole escapade apparently completely escaped
the notice of a wide array of governments, some military, some
democratic.
None
of this makes any sense, yet. But with the keywords
"Iran," "Islamic terrorism," and "nuclear
proliferation," this should be one of the stories to watch in
2004.
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