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Pakistan’s secret help to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program

Khan adds to nuclear intrigue Sydney Morning Herald JEFFREY SMITH AND JOBY WARRICK December 29, 2009 NORTH KOREA has built a plant to manufacture a gas needed for uranium enrichment, according to a previously unpublicised account by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program, Abdul Qadeer Khan.It is a development that indicates Pyongyang opened a second way to build nuclear weapons as early as the 1990s.Dr Khan also said North Korea might have been enriching uranium on a small scale by 2002, with ”maybe 3000 or even more” centrifuges, and that Pakistan helped the country with vital machinery, drawings and technical advice for at least six years.

North Korea’s nuclear program is among the world’s most secretive, and Dr Khan’s account could not be independently corroborated. But one United States intelligence official and a US diplomat said his information added to their suspicions that North Korea had long pursued the enrichment of uranium in addition to making plutonium for bombs……………

Since some of Dr Khan’s actions were exposed in 2003 and 2004, Pakistani officials have called him a rogue proliferator. However, he said there was a tacit agreement between the two governments that his laboratory ”would advise and guide them with the centrifuge program, and the North Koreans would help Pakistan [fit] the nuclear warhead” into its missiles, bought from North Korea. The Washington Post

Khan adds to nuclear intrigue

December 29, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Pakistan, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons