North Korea suspected of supplying uranium to Libya
Evidence gathered by the UN atomic agency suggests North Korea was the source of nearly two tons of uranium to Libya as part of attempts by Colonel Gaddafi to build nuclear warheads, diplomats said today.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the investigation was not yet complete and other sources still could not be ruled out.
Still, they said evidence increasingly points to the secretive communist country, leading to fears that it could have supplied other nations with fuel, components and knowledge needed to build nuclear weapons.
The evidence also buttresses US claims that the North has a second, secret weapons program using uranium technology. North Korea has said it only has one nuclear weapons program, based on plutonium.
Pakistan, the key country implicated in a worldwide black market nuclear network, had been thought to be the source of the 1.7 metric tonnes of uranium hexafluoride handed over to the Americans in January as part of Libya’s voluntary decision to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.
But “now, we believe that it might have been” North Korea who supplied the substance, said one of the diplomats. “It’s a definite possibility.”
The diplomat said the evidence from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency was based on interviews with members of the clandestine network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist implicated in selling his country’s nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea, Iran, and possibly other countries.
In its raw form, uranium hexafluoride cannot be used as nuclear fuel – or in warheads. But it is part of the enrichment cycle, using centrifuges to separate isotopes in the process that can make nuclear fuel – or warheads.
Libya had purchased hundreds of centrifuges as part of a multi-million-dollar enrichment program, with the Khan network as the main supplier.
One of the diplomats said that despite its size, the shipment thought to have come from North Korea would only have been enough to make one small nuclear weapon. When it came clean on its weapons ambitions in December, Libya was far away from achieving that goal.
But the evidence adds credibility to US insistence that the North – which is demanding US economic aid and other concessions in exchange for scrapping its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program – has a parallel and secret program using uranium enrichment to make such arms.
Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, has admitted that he provided North Korea with assistance for development of a uranium bomb, something the North Koreans deny
US officials believe North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs and could make several more within months.
