Pakistan attacks traffic in ‘nuclear secrets’

General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, on Saturday called on international investigators to probe an illegal underground traffic in nuclear secrets which he said stretched from Asia to Europe.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Musharraf — who has promised to prosecute those suspected of selling his country’s nuclear secrets to Iran in the late 1980s — said he would also like to see European countries and scientists investigated for their involvement in proliferation.

Pakistani investigators are currently checking the bank accounts of nine scientists, officials and senior soldiers detained in recent days on suspicion they may have sold nuclear technology to Iran and other countries between 1988 and 1991.

Most are linked to the laboratories at Kahuta, Pakistan’s leading nuclear weapons laboratory. Several are being held for ‘debriefings’. The Pakistani government denies it authorised any transfers of weapons technology, but says individuals may have done so for their own profit. Reports in Pakistan have mentioned sums as highs as $12-billion being paid by the recipients of the know-how.

Suspects include Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and General Mirza Aslam Beg, a former chief of army staff. Both are known to have sympathies with Islamist groups. Khan, who is a national hero, is known for having stolen blueprints of key technologies from a lab which employed him in Belgium in the Seventies.

Last week, the UK’s The Observer newspaper revealed that United Nations inspectors who recently visited a number of nuclear facilities in Libya discovered large amounts of aluminium centrifuge parts, essential for enriching uranium, that had ‘all the hallmarks of the … designs’ stolen by Khan.

Musharraf said that Pakistan’s investigation began after Iran disclosed the names of people — including Pakistani scientists — who provided them with nuclear technology. Last year the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) found evidence that suggested an Iranian effort to procure nuclear materials for military use. Tehran blamed components supplied from overseas and maintained that its own nuclear programme was peaceful.

Yesterday Musharraf, who is already under fire for failing to crack down on Islamic militant groups based in Pakistan, said it was possible that ‘unscrupulous’ individuals had exploited the autonomy they were given to develop Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent against India, a programme started about 30 years ago. Pakistan tested a series of nuclear devices in May 1998, incurring international sanctions that have only recently been partly lifted.

”We are carrying out an in-depth investigation and … we will sort out everyone who is involved,” Musharraf, who took power in 1999, said.

Pakistan has also been accused of giving nuclear technology to North Korea in return for details of long-range missiles. Islamabad denies the charge.

According to Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, nuclear proliferation involves an international ring of professional smugglers dealing in the technology of weapons of mass destruction.

”What we are seeing is a very sophisticated network of black-market proliferators, people who are selling material underground…We’re still very much in the process of investigating this network,” he said.