British and US intelligence missed a container-load of nuclear bomb-making equipment which arrived in Libya three months after President Muammar Gaddafi announced that he had scrapped his weapons of mass destruction programmes, UN nuclear inspectors have found.
In a confidential report on Libya’s 20-year secret nuclear project, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, revealed last night that a container of uranium enrichment centrifuges from Malaysia had reached Libya in March.
It was part of the nuclear contraband network organised by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Last October, in what the US hailed as a breakthrough in persuading Col Gaddafi to scrap his atomic weapons project, Italian officials impounded a shipload of nuclear bomb-making equipment bound for Libya from Malaysia via Dubai.
It was passed to the Americans, and the German ship, the BBC China, was released. But a container holding components for advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges known as L-2s passed undetected and the ship carried on to Libya with the secret cargo, the inspectors said.
”One container of L-2 components actually arrived in Libya in March 2004, having escaped the attention of the state authorities that had seized the ship,” said the report, obtained by the Guardian.
The shipment seizure was a key event in the unmasking of the extensive international black market in nuclear technology masterminded by Dr Khan.
A central figure in the network and in the shipment of the enrichment technology from Malaysia was arrested yesterday.
Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, a well-connected Sri Lankan businessman who worked with Dr Khan to run the international nuclear trade, was detained in Malaysia on suspicion of being a threat to national security.
It is the first arrest in the international effort to suppress one the biggest nuclear proliferation rackets ever uncovered.
The IAEA discovery of the rogue shipment to Col Gaddafi, who owned up and told the agency of the newly acquired equipment, reflects poorly on US and British intelligence, which spent nine months last year in intense secret negotiations with the Libyans, climaxing in December when Col Gaddafi announced that he was voluntarily renouncing his WMD programmes in return for international rehabilitation.
The Americans then bragged that their intelligence had produced the breakthrough by catching the October nuclear shipment and Col Gaddafi red-handed.
That claim is keenly contested by IAEA officials, who believe that Col Gaddafi told the US about the shipment to demonstrate good faith.
While yesterday’s report by Dr ELBaradei raises questions about Anglo-US prowess on the issue, it also makes it plain that the jury is still out on Col Gaddafi’s nuclear programme.
It says the project was almost entirely bought from abroad, including a blueprint for an atomic bomb. It remains sceptical about Tripoli’s claims that it has done nothing with this.
IAEA sources said that more detective work was needed to confirm that Col Gaddafi had genuinely scrapped his bomb project, although the report credits him with providing ample information and access.
The inspectors have also found traces of highly enriched uranium (HEU), used for bombs but not for power generation, on some of the imported enrichment equipment.
This suggests that Pakistan may be the source of the HEU — a point Iran has also made in answer to questions about the discovery of HEU in its centrifuge equipment. – Guardian Unlimited Â