Qualche tempo addietro mi convinsi che per conoscere nel dettaglio i traffici nucleari pakistani, sarebbe stato utile l'aiuto di una fonte indiana di alto livello.

raman1.jpg, image/jpeg, 300x183

Nessuno è più interessato al Pakistan degli indiani, e probabilmente nessuno li conosce meglio. E' stato seguendo questa idea che sono entrato in contatto con B. Raman, una delle più autorevoli ed obiettive fonti vicine al governo e all'intelligence indiana. Raman è stato membro del governo indiano, capo della Commissione per la riforma dell’intelligence nel suo paese; anima e dirige alcuni think tank, indiani ed asiatici; è stato relatore al Congresso americano e alla Banca Mondiale; è editorialista di diverse testate asiatiche.

La nostra corrispondenza si è concentrata sulla diffusione che il Pakistan ha fatto negli anni delle proprie conoscenze sul nucleare, partendo dal vasto traffico scoperto dagli ispettori della AIEA (Agenzia Atomica) fino ad integrare l’excursus con una descrizione completa del “cammino atomico” pakistano e dei suoi traffici e collaborazioni con altri paesi, al fine di ottenere la bomba atomica islamica e dei missili necessari per recapitarla. Il quadro attuale delineato da B. Raman, e descritto allo stesso modo anche da autorevoli commentatori britannici e statunitensi, allunga pesanti ombre sull’atteggiamento americano verso il regime pakistano, e sulla vicinanza e connivenza di questo con la jihad estremista; evidenziando come il fanatismo islamico sia molto, forse troppo, vicino a chi maneggia le bombe atomiche islamiche.

Traduco e trasmetto le risposte avute da B. Raman in merito ai traffici nucleari dal Pakistan ai cosiddetti “paesi canaglia”.

Negli ultimi anni di governo Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (padre di Benazir Bhutto) allargò ad Arabia Saudita, Iran e Libia il progetto pakistano per l’atomica, convertendolo nel progetto per una bomba atomica islamica da contrapporre a quelle che abitualmente chiamava le bombe cristiane, ebraiche ed hindù e persuase I loro governi a condividere i costi del progetto.

1. Se l’esatta contribuzione di ciascun paese non è nota, la gran parte del denaro è arrivato dall’Arabia Saudita e dalla Libia, in misura minore dall’Iran.

2. Mentre il flusso dei fondi per la bomba islamica fu sostanzioso e regolare da Arabia Saudita e Libia, fu sporadico dall’Iran. Regolare fino al 1979, fino a che lo Shah iraniano restò al potere.Dopo il successo della Rivoluzione Islamica in Iran nel 1979, gli Usa ed alcuni paesi occidentali imposero sanzioni economiche contro Teheran. Gli Stati Uniti congelarono tutti i conti iraniani nelle banche americane. La guerra Iran-Iraq del 1980 aggravò le difficoltà economiche iraniane.L’Arabia Sudita, uno stato wahabita, era molto diffidente verso I rivoluzionari sciiti iraniani. Il generale Zia-ul-Haq, che depose Z.A. Bhutto nel 1977 e prese il potere, era pure preoccupato della radicalizzazione degli sciiti pakistani a causa della vicina rivoluzione iraniana, sciiti che sono circa il 20% della popolazione. Gli Usa erano interessati nel successo iracheno nella guerra con l’Iran, e non avrebbero visto di buon grado il Pakistan congiurare con l’Iran ed aumentarne la forza militare.

3. Tutti questi fattori rallentarono il flusso di denaro dall’Iran, ma non l’interesse iraniano a beneficiare dell’esperienza atomica pakistana, e della sua tecnologia militare. Dopo la fine della guerra con l’Iran il flusso dei contributi è ripreso, aumentato e continuato.

4. quando Z.A. Bhutto e gli altri leader pakistani proposero la bomba pakistana come Bomba Islamica enfatizzarono questi punti:
· Il Pakistan avrebbe custodito la bomba, in rappresentanza di tutta la Ummah (Ndr: comunità islamica)
· La bomba avrebbe potuto essere usata, se ci fosse stata la necessità, non solo contro l’India, ma anche contro Israele.
· Se uno tra i paesi fondatori (Arabia Saudita, Libia e Iran) avesse sentito il bisogno di sviluppare una capacità atomica indipendente per proteggersi da Israele, il Pakistan sarebbe stato felice di assisterlo nell’addestrare i suoi scienziati negli stabilimenti pakistani, di condividere la tecnologia e l’esperienza accumulata e di mettere a sua disposizione i propri canali clandestini per procurarsi i materiali necessari.

5. In osservanza di questo accordo, squadre di scienziati nucleari di Arabia Saudita, Libia ed Iran hanno regolarmente visitato il Pakistan fin dagli anni ’80 per essere istruiti negli stabilimenti nucleari e scambiare esperienze con gli scienziati pakistani. Il dottor A.Q. Kahn, il cosiddetto padre della bomba pakistana, ha regolarmente visitato questi paesi fornendo loro assistenza.Il Pakistan acconsentì anche ad aiutare Libia ed Iran nella costruzione di impianti per l’arricchimento dell’uranio basati sul modello dell’istallazione di Kahuta, costruita su un modello olandese, sulla base dei disegni rubati da A.Q. Kahn, che vi aveva lavorato in precedenza (Ndr: nello stabilimento anglo-olandese a Utrecht).

6. L’assistenza a Libia ed Iran, fu limitata alla costruzione degli impianti per l’arricchimento o andò oltre aiutando questi paesi ad aumentare la propria capacità militare?
La bomba pakistana era costruita su modello cinese grazie a disegni forniti da Pechino ad Islamabad per bilanciare la capacità nucleare indiana. Fonti affidabili hanno riferito che quando il Pakistan condusse I suoi test nucleari a Chagai, nel maggio del 1998, scienziati sauditi e nordcoreani erano presenti, e che uno degli ordigni proveniva dalla Corea del Nord. Altri rapporti in passato avevano rivelato la presenza di nordcoreani a Chagai, ma quelli più recenti parlano della presenza di scienziati sauditi nell’istallazione, come maggiori finanziatori del progetto. Dicono anche che il Pakistan ha sicuramente consegnato i disegni cinesi ad Iran e Libia.

7. Qual’è la posizione dell’Arabia Saudita? Anche lei era interessata a sviluppare la capacità di produzione dell’uranio arricchito, e stava ricevendo l’aiuto pakistano?
Sulla base delle prove attualmente disponibili, io non lo credo. Secondo le mie conoscenze l’Arabia Saudita non ha un programma nucleare civile ambizioso, e troverebbe molte più difficoltà dello stesso Iran a giustificarne il bisogno.

8. In ogni caso, l’Arabia Saudita, che prende sul serio il progetto pakistano per la bomba islamica, e che ne è la maggiore fonte finanziaria, approfitta di una posizione privilegiata negli stabilimenti pakistani, la vista dei quali non è ancora stata concessa a libici o iraniani. Approfitta allo stesso tempo della sepoltura dei legami pakistani con questi paesi da parte dell’alleanza Usa-Uk dopo il 9/11. Questa posizione privilegiata è dimostrata dal fatto che l’ambasciatore saudita a Islamabad, o per lui un rappresentante fidato del regime saudita, siede in tutte le riunioni segrete tra militari e scienziati pakistani che discutono il programma pakistano e che quando giunge in Pakistan il principe della corona Abdullah compie poco pubblicizzate visite all’impianto per l’arricchimento di Kahuta e agli altri stabilimenti nucleari, e di abitudine veniva relazionato da A.Q. Kahn e altri eminenti scienziati sui vari aspetti del programma pakistano.

9. Ci sono alcune domande che rimangono inesaudite: La monarchia saudita non ha mai avuto fiducia in Iran e Libia. Era al corrente dei dettagli dell’assistenza a loro fornita dal Pakistan, e, se sì, perché non hanno cercato di spingere il freno e bloccarla?
E’ successo solo per la fiducia nel fatto che Libia ed Iran userebbero la loro capacità nucleare solo verso Israele e non contro altri paesi islamici?

10. Mentre l’assistenza pakistana ad Arabia Saudita, Iran e Libia nasceva da considerazioni di solidarietà islamica ed obblighi religiosi nell’aiutare un paese islamico fratello, quella fornita alla Corea del Nord era motivata dall’esigenza di ottenere dai coreani i missili a medio e lungo raggio e la tecnologia per produrli. La Cina ha fornito al Pakistan missili a breve raggio, in grado di portare testate nucleari, e forse anche a medio raggio, e la tecnologia per produrli; ma non ha mai accettato di fornire quelli a lungo raggio. Solo la Corea del Nord era disposta a fornirli loro, parte in cambio di denaro quanto mai necessario, parte per l’assistenza pakistana al fine di sviluppare una capacità nucleare. L’asse nucleare Pakistan-Corea del Nord è un’alleanza puramente utilitaristica.

11. C’erano o non c’erano altri paesi non islamici con I quali il Pakistan ha avuto contatti in passato?
SI. Brasile e Corea del Sud. Entrambi interessati al disegno e alle tecnologie di Kahuta. Non esiste, in ogni caso, alcuna prova che i contatti con questi paesi siano sfociati in accordi di effettiva assistenza.

12. Non è stupido da parte del Pakistan avere contemporaneamente contatti nucleari clandestini con reciproci avversari storici come il Nord e Sud Corea, o Arabia Saudita ed Iran?
Quello che a noi sembra stupido, ai leader pakistani appare come una opportunità per favori i propri interessi nazionali. Questa doppiezza, e questo doppio gioco in politica estera sono stati costanti nella storia pakistana sin dalla fondazione del paese nel 1947. Il Pakistan coopera con gli Usa nel monitorare i cosiddetti santuari in territorio iraniano. Allo stesso tempo condivide con l’Iran le informazioni sulla presenza e le attività americane in Afghanistan.

13. Quanto è alta la probabilità che il Pakistan, o alcuni scienziati pakistani individualmente, aiutino al Qaeda e il Fronte Islamico Internazionale (IIF) nell’acquisire capacità nucleare?
Come ho ripetutamente sottolineato fin dal 9/11, la Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) che è membra dell’IFF ed ora ne esercita la leadership, ha seguaci nella comunità degli scienziati nucleari pakistani. Alcuni rapporti sulla riunione annuale della LET nel suo quartier generale di Muridike, nel Punjab pakistano, ci parlano della presenza di scienziati nucleari, mai però identificati, a queste riunioni. Questa comunità è stata penetrata anche dall’ Hizbut Tehrir (HT) (Ndr: altra corrente fondamentalista, però su base elitaria e pare nonviolenta, di pakistani istruiti in occidente che inorriditi dall’esperienza propugnano il rinascimento islamico). C’è una crescente comunità di scienziati nucleari jihadisti in Pakistan. Lo scienziato in pensione, Sultan Bashiruddin Chaudhry e Abdul Majid, che furono scoperti ad avere contatti con Osama Bin Laden in nome di una organizzazione non governativa di aiuto umanitario, costituiscono solo la punta dell’iceberg della presenza della jihad all’interno dell’establishment nucleare pakistano.Il pericolo che esista la probabilità che si verifichi un trasferimento di materiali e tecnologie nucleari ad al Qaeda e all’IFF da parte di alcuni di questi; è reale.

14. Il mondo sembra aver dimenticato quello che i servizi occidentali scoprirono tra il 1985 e il 1988, un network pakistano clandestino per recuperare rifiuti nucleari dagli stabilimenti nucleari in Germania ed altri paesi europei. Queste attività sono ulteriori rispetto a quelle del network con il quale A.Q Kahn operava per fornire tecnologia per l’arricchimento dell’uranio e macchinari. Perché erano interessati a procurarsi rifiuti nucleari? Per cercare di usarli contro l’India in ordigni radioattivi (bomba sporca), se ce ne fosse stato il bisogno. (Ndr: in settembre la nave Bbc China viene dirottata da Suez nel porto di Taranto, dal suo interno misteriosi materiali vengono trasferiti in segreto in Germania. Mentre vengono fermati tre cittadini tedeschi e un sudafricano, si scopre che il materiale era stato spedito dalla Malesia, dove i pakistani producevano i pezzi, alla Libia; si trattava di pezzi per la costruzione di centrifughe nucleari.)
15. Gli americani sostengono di avere una conoscenza accurate dei dettagli della produzione e dello stoccaggio del sistema pakistano. Ma, cosa successe alle grandi quantità di rifiuti nucleari procurati da Kahn & co. negli anni ’80?
Nessuno lo sa. Non essere sorpreso se scopriremo queste scorte nelle mani di al Qaeda in attesa di impiego.

16. La promiscuità nucleare pakistana, non è fatta di relazioni una-botta-e-via. E’ un lungo e continuo affare. A.Q.Khan e mezza dozzina di scienziati ostentatamente arrestati ed interrogati dal presidente Pervez Musharraf all’inizio di quest’anno, non erano i soli partecipanti in esso. Ogni generale pakistano, da Zia fino a Musharraf compreso ha partecipato attivamente. Se si vuole stabilire e completare il quadro, A.Q Kahn e gli altri scienziati coinvolti d+evono essere prelevati dal Pakistan ed interrogati da una squadra di esperti internazionali. Fino a che questo non sarà fatto la spada di Damocle nucleare continuerà a pendere sulle nostre teste. ( Ndr: Questa richiesta non è stata mai proposta dall’amministrazione Usa, mentre la settimana scorsa, in una intervista al Washington Post, Musharraf metteva le mani avanti dichiarando che tale richiesta sarebbe una offesa all’onore del Pakistan.)

altri articoli correlati da qui:
http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/693209.php

(1) Bahukutumbi Raman:
notes & biography

Segretario aggiunto (ex), segretario del gabinetto, già membro (2000-2002), del National Security Advisory Board (NSAB); già membro della Task Force per la riforma dell'intelligence; governo indiano, New Delhi; e ora direttore, dell'Institute for Topical studies di Chennai (Madras), e distinto socio e relatore della Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.

- Ha relazionato in due occasioni (2002 e 2004) alla Commissione sull'Intelligence del Senato Americano.
- Durante la sua visita nel 2002 ha tenuto vari discorsi su vari aspetti del terrorismo in Asia alla University of California Los Angeles (Feb 23, 2002), Potomac Institute of Policy Studies, Washington DC (Feb 25, 2002), India Club, World Bank, Washington DC (Feb 26, 2002) e al James A. Baker III Institute For Public Policy, Rice University, Houston (Feb 28, 2002).
- Visita regolarmente diversi altri paesi per incontri sulla sicurezza regionale.
- B. Raman è autore di due libri: "Intelligence-Past, Present And Future" e "A Terrorist State As A Frontline Ally", entrambi editi da Lancer Publications di New Delhi nel 2001.
- Ha cominciato la sua carriera come giornalista ed è editorialista fisso della "Indian Defence Review" di New Delhi ed è nel consiglio degli editorialisti e consulenti onorari della rivista.
- E' associato anche al South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG), New Delhi, da ottobre, 1998 e i suoi articoli sono pubblicati su http://www.saag.org e su Outlook India (http://www.outlookindia.com), nonchè su http://www.atimes.com .
-- Membro del Consiglio Nazionale di Sicurezza (National Security Advisory Board;NSAB) del governo indiano nel 2000-01 e nel 2001-02.
- Tiene relazioni regolari su terrorismo, sicurezza interna etc. alla National Police Academy, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh; al National Defence College, New Delhi; al Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, Tamil Nadu, e all''Army College of Combat, Mhow, Madhya Pradesh.


mazzetta
http://www.reporterassociati.org

i media Usa "aggiustano il tiro":



As Nuclear Secrets Emerge, More Are Suspected
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: December 26, 2004




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Threats and Responses
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THE BOMB MERCHANT
Chasing Dr. Khan's Network

MULTIMEDIA

A Nuclear Network Partly Revealed


Graphic: A Nuclear Network Partly Revealed




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When experts from the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency came upon blueprints for a 10-kiloton atomic bomb in the files of the Libyan weapons program earlier this year, they found themselves caught between gravity and pettiness.

The discovery gave the experts a new appreciation of the audacity of the rogue nuclear network led by A. Q. Khan, a chief architect of Pakistan's bomb. Intelligence officials had watched Dr. Khan for years and suspected that he was trafficking in machinery for enriching uranium to make fuel for warheads. But the detailed design represented a new level of danger, particularly since the Libyans said he had thrown it in as a deal-sweetener when he sold them $100 million in nuclear gear.

"This was the first time we had ever seen a loose copy of a bomb design that clearly worked," said one American expert, "and the question was: Who else had it? The Iranians? The Syrians? Al Qaeda?"

But that threat was quickly overshadowed by smaller questions.

The experts from the United States and the I.A.E.A., the United Nations nuclear watchdog - in a reverberation of their differences over Iraq's unconventional weapons - began quarreling over control of the blueprints. The friction was palpable at Libya's Ministry of Scientific Research, said one participant, when the Americans accused international inspectors of having examined the design before they arrived. After hours of tense negotiation, agreement was reached to keep it in a vault at the Energy Department in Washington, but under I.A.E.A. seal.

It was a sign of things to come.

Nearly a year after Dr. Khan's arrest, secrets of his nuclear black market continue to uncoil, revealing a vast global enterprise. But the inquiry has been hampered by discord between the Bush administration and the nuclear watchdog, and by Washington's concern that if it pushes too hard for access to Dr. Khan, a national hero in Pakistan, it could destabilize an ally. As a result, much of the urgency has been sapped from the investigation, helping keep hidden the full dimensions of the activities of Dr. Khan and his associates.

There is no shortage of tantalizing leads. American intelligence officials and the I.A.E.A., working separately, are still untangling Dr. Khan's travels in the years before his arrest. Investigators said he visited 18 countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, on what they believed were business trips, either to buy materials like uranium ore or sell atomic goods.

In Dubai, they have scoured one of the network's front companies, finding traces of radioactive material as well as phone records showing contact with Saudi Arabia. Having tracked the network operations to Malaysia, Europe and the Middle East, investigators recently uncovered an outpost in South Africa, where they seized 11 crates of equipment for enriching uranium.

The breadth of the operation was particularly surprising to some American intelligence officials because they had had Dr. Khan under surveillance for nearly three decades, since he began assembling components for Pakistan's bomb, but apparently missed crucial transactions with countries like Iran and North Korea.

In fact, officials were so confident they had accurately taken his measure, that twice - once in the late 1970's and again in the 1980's - the Central Intelligence Agency persuaded Dutch intelligence agents not to arrest Dr. Khan because they wanted to follow his trail, according to a senior European diplomat and a former Congressional official who had access to intelligence information. The C.I.A. declined to comment.

"We knew a lot," said a nuclear intelligence official, "but we didn't realize the size of his universe."

President Bush boasts that the Khan network has been dismantled. But there is evidence that parts of it live on, as do investigations in Washington and Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is based.

Cooperation between the United Nations atomic agency and the United States has trickled to a near halt, particularly as the Bush administration tries to unseat the I.A.E.A. director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, who did not support the White House's prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq.

The chill from the White House has blown through Vienna. "I can't remember the last time we saw anything of a classified nature from Washington," one of the agency's senior officials said. Experts see it as a missed opportunity because the two sides have complementary strengths - the United States with spy satellites and covert capabilities to intercept or disable nuclear equipment, and the I.A.E.A. with inspectors who have access to some of the world's most secretive atomic facilities that the United States cannot legally enter.



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In the 11 months since Dr. Khan's partial confession, Pakistan has denied American investigators access to him. They have passed questions through the Pakistanis, but report that there is virtually no new information on critical questions like who else obtained the bomb design. Nor have American investigators been given access to Dr. Khan's chief operating officer, Buhari Sayed Abu Tahir, who is in a Malaysian jail.

This disjunction has helped to keep many questions about the network unanswered, including whether the Pakistani military was involved in the black market and what other countries, or nonstate groups, beyond Libya, Iran and North Korea, received what one Bush administration official called Dr. Khan's "nuclear starter kit" - everything from centrifuge designs to raw uranium fuel to the blueprints for the bomb.

Privately, investigators say that with so many mysteries unsolved, they have little confidence that the illicit atomic marketplace has actually been shut down. "It may be more like Al Qaeda," said one I.A.E.A. official, "where you cut off the leadership but new elements emerge."

A Potential Danger

A. Q. Khan may have been unknown to most Americans when he was revealed about a year ago as the mastermind of the largest illicit nuclear proliferation network in history. But for three decades Dr. Khan, a metallurgist, has been well known to British and American intelligence officials. Even so, the United States and its allies passed up opportunities to stop him - and apparently failed to detect that he had begun selling nuclear technology to Iran in the late 1980's. It was the opening transaction for an enterprise that eventually spread to North Korea, Libya and beyond.

Dr. Khan studied in Pakistan and Europe. After he secured a job in the Netherlands in the early 1970's at a plant making centrifuges - the devices that purify uranium - Dutch intelligence officials began watching him. By late 1975, they grew so wary, after he was observed at a nuclear trade show in Switzerland asking suspicious questions, that they moved him to a different area of the company to keep him away from uranium enrichment work. "There was an awareness," said Frank Slijper of the Dutch Campaign against Arms Trade, who recently wrote a report on Dr. Khan's early days, "that he was a potential danger."

Dr. Khan suddenly left the country that December, called home by his government for its atomic project. Years later, investigators discovered that he had taken blueprints for the centrifuges with him. In Pakistan, Dr. Khan was working to develop a bomb to counter India's, and Washington was intent on stopping the project.

It later proved to be the first of several occasions when the United States failed to fully understand what Dr. Khan was up to. Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who has served in several administrations, said American intelligence agencies thought Pakistan would try to make its bomb by producing plutonium - an alternative bomb fuel. Mr. Nye was sent to France to halt the shipment of technology that would have enabled Pakistan to complete a reprocessing plant for the plutonium fuel. "We returned to Washington to celebrate our victory, only to discover that Khan had already stolen the technology for another path to the bomb," Mr. Nye recalled.

To gather more atomic gear and skill, Dr. Khan returned to the Netherlands repeatedly. But the United States wanted to watch him, and a European diplomat with wide knowledge of nuclear intelligence cited the two occasions when the C.I.A. persuaded the Dutch authorities not to arrest him. Intelligence officials apparently felt Dr. Khan was more valuable as an unwitting guide to the nuclear underworld.

"The Dutch wanted to arrest him," the diplomat said. "But they were told by the American C.I.A., 'Leave him so we can follow his trail.' "

A Chinese Connection


Dr. Khan quickly led the agents to Beijing. It was there in the early 1980's that Dr. Khan pulled off a coup: obtaining the blueprints for a weapon that China had detonated in its fourth nuclear test, in 1966. The design was notable because it was compact and the first one China had developed that could easily fit atop a missile.

American intelligence agencies only learned the full details of the transactions earlier this year when the Libyans handed over two large plastic bags with the names of an Islamabad tailor on one side and a dry-cleaner on other - one of several clues that it had come from the Khan Laboratories. The design inside included drawings of more than 100 parts, all fitting in a sphere about 34 inches in diameter, just the right size for a rocket.



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Equally remarkable were the handwritten notations in the margins. "They made reference to Chinese ministers, presumably involved in the deal," one official who reviewed it disclosed. And there was also a reference to "Munir," apparently Munir Khan, Dr. Khan's rival who ran the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and was in a contest with Dr. Khan to put together a Pakistani weapon that would match India's.

In that race, size was critical, because only a small weapon could be put atop Pakistani missiles. One note in the margin of the design, the official said, was that "Munir's bomb would be bigger."

Intelligence experts believe that Dr. Khan traded his centrifuge technology to the Chinese for their bomb design.

A certain familiarity developed between Dr. Khan and those watching him.

"I remember I was once in Beijing on a nonproliferation mission," said Robert J. Einhorn, a longtime proliferation official in the State Department, "and we knew that Khan was in Beijing, too, and where he was. I had this fantasy of going over to his hotel, calling up to his room, and inviting him down for a cup of coffee."

Of course, he never did. But if he had, Dr. Khan might not have been surprised.

Simon Henderson, a London-based author who has written about Dr. Khan for more than two decades, said the Pakistani scientist long suspected he was under close surveillance. "Khan once told me, indignantly, 'The British try to recruit members of my team as spies,' " Mr. Henderson recalled. "As far as I'm aware, he was penetrated for a long, long time."

Still, for all the surveillance, American officials always seemed a step or two behind. In the 1990's, noted Mr. Einhorn, the assumption was that Iran was getting most of its help from Russia, which was providing the country with reactors and laser-isotope technology. Virtually no attention was paid to its contacts with Dr. Khan.

"It was a classic case of being focused in the wrong place," Mr. Einhorn said. "And if Iran gets the bomb in the next few years, it won't be because of the Russians. It will be because of the help they got from A. Q. Khan."

Triumph and Mystery

As soon as Mr. Bush came to office, his director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, began tutoring him on the dangers of Dr. Khan and disclosing how deeply the agency believed it had penetrated his life and network. "We were inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms," Mr. Tenet said in a recent speech. "We were everywhere these people were."

But acting on the Khan problem meant navigating the sensitivities of a fragile ally important in the effort against terrorism. That has impeded the inquiry ever since.

Washington had little leverage to force Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to clamp down on a national hero, especially since Dr. Khan may have had evidence implicating the Pakistani government in some of the transactions. And in interviews, officials said they feared that moving on Dr. Khan too early would hurt their chances to roll up the network.

Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, went to Pakistan soon after the Sept. 11 attacks and raised concerns about Dr. Khan, some of whose scientists were said to have met with Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda's leader. But Mr. Hadley did not ask General Musharraf to take action, according to a senior administration official. He returned to Washington complaining that it was unclear whether the Khan Laboratories were operating with the complicity of the Pakistani military, or were controlled by freelancers, motivated by visions of profit or of spreading the bomb to Islamic nations. The Pakistanis insisted they had no evidence of any proliferation at all, a claim American officials said they found laughable.





As evidence grew in 2003, Mr. Bush sent Mr. Tenet to New York to meet with General Musharraf. "We were afraid Khan's operation was entering a new, more dangerous phase," said one top official. Still there was little action.

But in late October 2003, the United States and its allies seized the BBC China, a freighter bearing centrifuge parts made in Malaysia, along with other products of Dr. Khan's network, all bound for Libya. Confronted with the evidence, Libya finally agreed to surrender all of its nuclear program. Within weeks, tons of equipment was being dismantled and flown to the Energy Department's nuclear weapons lab at Oak Ridge, Tenn.



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Pressures mounted on General Musharraf. "I said to him, 'We know so much about this that we're going to go public with it,' " Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told journalists last week. " 'And you need to deal with this before you have to deal with it publicly.' "

On television, Dr. Khan was forced to confess but he gave no specifics, and General Musharraf pardoned the scientist. American officials pressed to interview him and his chief lieutenant, Mr. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman living in Dubai and Malaysia, who was eventually arrested by Malaysian authorities.

But the Pakistanis balked, insisting that they would pass questions to Dr. Khan and report back. Little information has been conveyed.

"Some questions simply were never answered," said one senior intelligence official. "In other cases, you don't know if you were getting Khan's answer, or the answer the government wanted you to hear."

Dr. Khan's silence has extended to the question of what countries, other than Libya, received the bomb design. Intelligence experts say they have no evidence any other nation received the design, although they suspect Iran and perhaps North Korea. But that search has been hampered by lack of hard intelligence.

"We strongly believe Iran did," said one American official. "But we need the proof."

Dr. Khan has also never discussed his ties with North Korea, a critical issue because the United States has alleged - but cannot prove - that North Korea has two nuclear arms programs, one using Khan technology.

"It is an unbelievable story, how this administration has given Pakistan a pass on the single worst case of proliferation in the past half century," said Jack Pritchard, who worked for President Clinton and served as the State Department's special envoy to North Korea until he quit last year, partly in protest over Mr. Bush's Korea policy. "We've given them a pass because of Musharraf's agreement to fight terrorism, and now there is some suggestion that the hunt for Osama is waning. And what have we learned from Khan? Nothing."

Some Missing Pieces

In March, American investigators invited reporters to the giant nuclear complex in Oak Ridge to display the equipment disgorged by the Libyans. They surrounded the site with guards bearing automatic weapons, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham joined the officials in showing off some of the 4,000 centrifuges.

"We've had a huge success," he said. But it turned out that the centrifuges were missing their rotors - the high-speed internal device that makes them work. To this day, it is not clear where those parts were coming from. While some officials believe the Libyans were going to make their own, others fear the equipment had been shipped from an unknown location - and that the network, while headless, is still alive.

John R. Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, echoed those suspicions, saying the network still had a number of undisclosed customers. "There's more out there than we can discuss publicly," he said in April.

Federal and private experts said the suspected list of customers included Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Kuwait, Myanmar and Abu Dhabi.

Given the urgency of the Libyan and Khan disclosures, many private and governmental experts expected that the Bush administration and the I.A.E.A. would work together. But European diplomats said the administration never turned over valuable information to back up its wider suspicions about other countries. "It doesn't like to share," a senior European diplomat involved in nuclear intelligence said of the United States. "That makes life more difficult. So we're on the learning curve."






Federal officials said

they were reluctant to give the I.A.E.A. classified information because the agency is too prone to leaks. The agency has 137 member states, and American officials believe some of them may be using the agency to hunt for nuclear secrets. One senior administration official put it this way: "The cops and the crooks all serve on the agency's board together."



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The result is that two separate, disjointed searches are on for other nuclear rogue states - one by Washington, the other by the I.A.E.A. And there is scant communication between the feuding bureaucracies.

That lack of communication with the United Nations agency extends to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a loose organization of countries that produce nuclear equipment. It can stop the export of restricted atomic technology to a suspect customer, but it does not report its actions to the I.A.E.A. Moreover, there is no communication between the I.A.E.A. and the Bush administration's Proliferation Security Initiative, which seeks to intercept illicit nuclear trade at sea or in the air.

"It's a legitimate question whether we need a very different kind of super-agency that can deal with the new world of A. Q. Khans," said a senior administration official. "Because we sure don't have the system we need now."

Dr. ElBaradei, the head of the United Nations agency, says he is plunging ahead, pursuing his own investigation even as the Bush administration attempts to have him replaced when his term expires late next year. In an interview in Vienna, he defended his record, citing the information he has wrung out of Iran, and his agency's discovery of tendrils of Dr. Khan's network in more than 30 countries around the globe.

"We're getting an idea of how it works," he said of the Khan network. "And we're still looking" for other suppliers and customers.

One method is to investigate the countries Dr. Khan visited before his arrest. Nuclear experts disclosed that the countries were Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. Many of them are Islamic, and several of the African countries are rich in uranium ore.

In one of its biggest operations, the agency is hunting for clues in a half dozen of the network's buildings and warehouses in Dubai, which for years were used for assembling and repacking centrifuges.

Both in Washington and in Vienna, the most delicate investigations involve important American allies - including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. So far, said European intelligence officials familiar with the agency's inner workings, no hard evidence of clandestine nuclear arms programs has surfaced.

Suspicious signs have emerged, however. For instance, experts disclosed that SMB Computers, Mr. Tahir's front company in Dubai for the Khan network, made telephone calls to Saudi Arabia. But the company also engaged in legitimate computer sales, giving it plausible cover. Experts also disclosed that Saudi scientists traveled to Pakistan for some of Dr. Khan's scientific conferences. But the meetings were not secret, or illegal.

There is also worry in both Washington and Vienna about Egypt, which has two research reactors near Cairo and a long history of internal debate about whether to pursue nuclear arms. But European intelligence officials said I.A.E.A. inspectors who recently went there found no signs of clandestine nuclear arms and some evidence of shoddy workmanship that bespeaks low atomic expectations. As for Syria, the Bush administration had repeatedly charged that it has secretly tried to acquire nuclear arms. But the I.A.E.A. has so far found no signs of a relationship with Dr. Khan or a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Worried about what is still unknown, the I.A.E.A. is quietly setting up what it calls the Covert Nuclear Trade Analysis Unit, agency officials disclosed. It has about a half dozen specialists looking for evidence of deals by the Khan network or its imitators.

"I would not be surprised to discover that some countries pocketed some centrifuges," Dr. ElBaradei said. "They may have considered it a chance of a lifetime to get some equipment and thought, 'Well, maybe it will be good for a rainy day.' "

William J. Broad reported from New York for this article, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

Anche il governo pakistano ammette ufficialmente, pur negando il coinvolgimento gocernativo, ma non interessa a nessuno.

Rogue Pakistani Scientist Gave Iran Nuclear Centrifuges

Reuters
Thursday, March 10, 2005; 7:32 AM

ISLAMABAD, March 10 -- Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced scientist dubbed the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, provided Iran with centrifuges that can be used to purify uranium for nuclear weapons, the Pakistani government said on Thursday.

Pakistan has admitted in the past that Khan smuggled nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, but has not given specifics as to what he supplied.

"He has given centrifuges to Iran, but the government was in no way involved in this," Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters.

Centrifuges are used to purify uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons.

Iran insists it intends to use enriched uranium only in power stations, but Washington argues that Iran is making fuel for atomic warheads.

Britain, France and Germany are leading European diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to scrap uranium enrichment. Iran has frozen most of its enrichment programme as a confidence-building measure, but has said the freeze would be short-lived.

_39824397_centrifuge2_416inf.gif, image/gif, 416x350

Iran 'given Pakistan centrifuges'
AQ Khan Pakistani nuclear scientist
Khan confessed last year to leaking nuclear secrets
Pakistan has confirmed that the former head of its nuclear weapons programme, AQ Khan, gave centrifuges for enriching uranium to Iran.

It is the first time Pakistani officials have publicised details of what nuclear materials the disgraced scientist passed on to Iran.

Information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the BBC's Urdu service that "a few" centrifuges were involved.

Iran is under international pressure over its nuclear ambitions.

The Pakistani information minister stated again on Thursday that his government had no knowledge of Dr Khan's activities.

Last month he dismissed reports that the US was probing whether Dr Khan had sold nuclear secrets to Arab nations.

European countries and the UN recently joined the US in criticising Iran for allegedly not keeping a pledge to suspend uranium enrichment activities.

UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said this month that the "ball is very much in Iran's court to come clean".

The US accuses Iran of cynically pursuing nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists its programme is peaceful.

Nation shocked

The US has called Dr Khan the "biggest proliferator" of nuclear technology.

He shocked Pakistan early last year when he went on television and confessed to leaking nuclear secrets.

He said he took full responsibility for proliferating nuclear weapons to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Dr Khan had held the post of scientific adviser since retiring as head of the country's top nuclear facility in 2001 but was sacked after his confession.

He has been held under virtual house since his confession.

Although the government has passed on information about his former activities to the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority, it will not let any foreign officials interview him.