Hunt widens for nuclear leaks middlemen

The hunt for middlemen who worked with the father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme to supply rogue regimes with weapons technology has widened to Japan and Africa, diplomats said.

Suspects in Germany and two other European countries are also being investigated in the growing probe of the clandestine black market apparently headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, diplomats said in Vienna.

The chief UN nuclear inspector said today that Khan was an “important part” of the clandestine supply chain, but he said long and painstaking investigations into who sold what and to whom lay ahead.

“Dr Khan was not working alone,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “There were items that were manufactured in other countries, items that were reassembled in different countries.

“Dr Khan was the tip of an iceberg for us, but we still have a lot of work to do.”

ElBaradei said middlemen in five countries supplied nuclear technology and expertise to Iran – which denies running a nuclear weapons programme – and to Libya, which has owned up to having weapons of mass destruction or programs to make them.

Pakistani officials have said Khan’s network had supplied North Korea, too, but ElBaradei said he could not confirm that.

The five countries include Germany and Japan as well as two countries in Europe and one in Africa that the diplomats would not name.

In Washington, CIA Director George Tenet confirmed that Khan was at the centre of the nuclear black market. He said US and British intelligence had been tracking its movements for years.

“His network was shaving years off the nuclear weapons development timelines of several states, including Libya,” Tenet said in a speech.

Pakistan – and Khan – became the focus of international investigation on the basis of information Libya and Iran gave the IAEA about where they covertly bought nuclear technology that can be used to make weapons.

In Islamabad, President General Pervez Musharraf said the IAEA was welcome to come and discuss the proliferation issue. “We are open and we will tell them everything,” Musharraf said.

Pakistan, which did not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, is not obliged to submit its nuclear weapons activity to outside scrutiny.

Musharraf also pardoned Khan, heading off any trial that could have uncovered revelations about government and military involvement.

In the nuclear procurement chain headed by Khan, hundreds of millions of dollars are thought to have changed hands over the past 15 years.

Among items bought by Libya were engineers’ drawings of a nuclear weapon, now under IAEA seal in the United States.

One of the diplomats said that drawing appeared to be of Chinese design but cautioned against assuming it came directly from China.

China is widely assumed to have been Pakistan’s key supplier of much of the clandestine nuclear technology that Khan used to publicly establish Pakistan as a nuclear power in 1998.