Secrets for sale at Pakistani's nuclear supermarket

When North Korea decided it wanted to develop nuclear weapons, it had no trouble finding willing assistants in other countries.

In 1975, young Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan returned home, after working at a Dutch uranium enrichment facility.

Khan, who developed the world's first Islamic nuclear bomb for Pakistan in a top-secret programme, in the mid-1980s opened his own private "supermarket", which sold secrets to anyone who would pay.

One branch was in his Pakistan laboratories, where four or six scientists were - perhaps unwittingly - involved. But the hub was in Dubai, which took care of procurement and distribution, with the help of European businessmen.

One flight from Pakistan to North Korea carrying conventional weapons was intercepted by the Pakistani Government, acting on a tip-off that sensitive material was on board.

They found nothing - apparently because Khan's people were told in advance.

Flights to Iran - which received a centrifuge blueprint from Khan in the 1980s as part of a nuclear programme starter kit - also took place.

The centrifuge is the spinning machine which enriches uranium to levels suitable for production of nuclear weapons.

Through his network, Khan sent North Korea nearly two dozen P-1 centrifuges, and an unknown number of more sophisticated P-11 centrifuges, says President Pervez Musharraf, who debriefed the Pakistani scientist after his fall from grace.

It has become apparent that North Korea was part of a global web of nuclear proliferation and was selling secrets to Iran.

By 1994, the Americans had become so worried about North Korea's clandestine programme that the Clinton Administration signed an agreement under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its suspect nuclear weapons programme in return for two "safe" lightwater reactors for civilian purposes, and shipments of fuel.

Musharraf says in his memoirs, In the Line of Fire, that he became suspicious when he took over responsibility for Khan's activities in 1999.

He says: "I received a report suggesting that some North Korean nuclear experts, under the guise of missile engineers, had arrived at Khan Research Laboratories and were being given secret briefings on centrifuges."

Musharraf and Pakistan's intelligence chief confronted Khan and he denied the report. But once Khan had been confronted, his programme went further underground.

In October 2002 the US learned that North Korea had a programme to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, and ended fuel deliveries there.

In December 2002, United Nations inspectors were expelled, and the following month, North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.

In February last year, it announced that it had made nuclear weapons.


Atomic mastermind

Abdul Qadeer Khan is regarded as a national hero for helping Pakistan become a nuclear state.

Born in India, in 1935, Khan moved to Pakistan in 1952.

In the 1970s, he worked at a Dutch uranium enrichment plant.

In 1976, he returned home to head the nation's nuclear programme.

In March 2001 he was appointed science and technology adviser to President Pervez Musharraf.

In January 2004, he was sacked when it became known he had been involved in a network of nuclear weapons technology proliferation from Pakistan to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

On February 5, 2004, Musharraf announced Khan had been pardoned.

- INDEPENDENT