Report: Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan aided Iran

Evidence released this week shows his nuclear-secrets network may still be active.

from the May 4, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 3

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The jury is still out as to whether Pakistan's nuclear proliferation network, run by scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, is truly dead. But evidence presented this week, by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), suggests it is not and raises new questions about how that network accommodated Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The report reveals that Mr. Khan "provided Iran with centrifuges, technical designs, components, and an 'address book' of suppliers" and also claims that pieces of Khan's network could still be in operation.

Iran has denied that Pakistani nuclear scientists aided its nuclear program, which it maintains is for peaceful civilian purposes. But the IISS's report suggests that "at least some of Khan's associates appear to have escaped law-enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black-market business."

Their most likely client, the report insinuates, is Iran, which "remains the most active customer in the international nuclear black market."

A crestfallen Khan publicly confessed to his proliferation scheme three years ago, following a Pakistani military-led investigation. That inquiry was prompted by former CIA director George Tenet, who had presented proof of Khan's deceptions to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Since that time, no one but Pakistan's military has been allowed to question him, despite the international implications of his proliferation network, which sold or traded nuclear-weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, and offered information to Iraq in 1990, according to the IISS report.

"Some details concerning exactly what Iran received [from Khan] are still uncertain. What is clear is that Khan's sales helped Iran to make significant advances in its clandestine nuclear programme," said John Chipman, IISS' executive director, in an introductory statement to the report, titled "Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks."

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | Next Page