AP: Pakistan Knew of Nuclear Black Market

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&e=3&u=/ap/20040307/ap_on_re_as/nuclear_black_market

AP: Pakistan Knew of Nuclear Black Market

1 hour, 2 minutes ago

By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria - U.N. investigators are increasingly certain Pakistan government leaders knew the country's top atomic scientist was supplying other nations with nuclear technology and designs, particularly North Korea (news - web sites), diplomats told The Associated Press.

While rogue nations were the main customers of the nuclear black market, sales of enriched uranium and warhead drawings have fed international fears that terrorists also could have bought weapons technology or material, the diplomats said.

The investigation has widened beyond Iran, Libya and North Korea — the identified customers of the network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan — they said, speaking on condition of anonymity in a series of interviews.
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Despite denials by the Pakistani government, investigators now are certain that some, if not all, of the country's decision makers were aware of Khan's dealings, especially with North Korea, which apparently helped Islamabad build missiles in exchange for aid with its nuclear arms program, said one diplomat.

"In all cases except Pakistan, we are sure there was no government involvement," he said. "In Pakistan, it's hard to believe all this happened under their noses and nobody knew about it."

The diplomats didn't say which parts of the Pakistani government might have known of Khan's black market activity - military, political or both.

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On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan’s misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan “my hero”). Musharraf told the Times that he had received a specific accounting of Khan’s activities in Iran, North Korea, and Malaysia from the United States only last October. “If they knew earlier, they should have told us,” he said. “Maybe a lot of things would not have happened.”

It was a make-believe performance in a make-believe capital. In interviews last month in Islamabad, a planned city built four decades ago, politicians, diplomats, and nuclear experts dismissed the Khan confession and the Musharraf pardon with expressions of scorn and disbelief. For two decades, journalists and American and European intelligence agencies have linked Khan and the Pakistani intelligence service, the I.S.I. (Inter-Service Intelligence), to nuclear-technology transfers, and it was hard to credit the idea that the government Khan served had been oblivious. “It is state propaganda,” Samina Ahmed, the director of the Islamabad office of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that studies conflict resolution, told me. “The deal is that Khan doesn’t tell what he knows. Everybody is lying. The tragedy of this whole affair is that it doesn’t serve anybody’s needs.” Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who is a member of the Pakistani senate, said with a laugh, “America needed an offering to the gods—blood on the floor. Musharraf told A.Q., ‘Bend over for a spanking.’”

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