Posted on 03/10/2005 9:27:20 AM PST by F14 Pilot
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist at the centre of a nuclear black market, gave Iran centrifuges, the Pakistani government says.
Centrifuges are used to purify uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons.
Pakistan has admitted in the past that Khan, dubbed the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, smuggled nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, but has not given specifics as to what he supplied.
"He has given centrifuges to Iran, but the government was in no way involved in this," Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Reuters on Thursday.
Iran insists it intends to use enriched uranium only in power stations, but Washington argues that Iran is making fuel for atomic warheads.
Britain, France and Germany are leading European diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to scrap uranium enrichment. Iran has frozen most of its enrichment programme as a confidence-building measure but has said the freeze would be short-lived.
TELEVISED APOLOGY
A.Q. Khan, revered in Pakistan as the man who secured for Pakistan the nuclear arms capability to balance that of nuclear armed neighbour and rival India, admitted to proliferating nuclear materials last year and made a televised apology to the nation.
The scandal was a severe embarrassment for Pakistan, the only Islamic state currently known to have nuclear weapons, and raised fears that weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of militants or rogue states.
Khan remains under close guard at his home in Islamabad, although authorities deny he is under house arrest and have refused to allow experts from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to question him.
"We will not hand over Dr. Qadeer to any other country," Ahmed reiterated on Thursday.
As European officials began a new round of talks with Iranian negotiators in Geneva on Tuesday, Iranian officials threatened to break off negotiations if they continued to insist that Tehran abandon all sensitive atomic activities.
In a further sign of defiance, Iran's parliament added a clause to next year's budget bill obliging the government to conduct feasibility studies for constructing nuclear power plants that would generate 20 gigawatts (GW) of electricity.
The government has so far announced plans for producing only 7 GW of power from nuclear reactors by 2020. Iran's first 1 GW reactor is due to come onstream in late 2006.
The EU says Iran must provide "objective guarantees" that it is not pursuing atomic weapons -- which they say can be nothing short of a termination of enrichment. Iran says increased inspections and limits on enrichment levels would suffice.
ping
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The term 'Paki' actually is quite derogatory, at least in the commonwealth countries.
Hey, cut him some slack- he didn't have rice cookers to give out (like Fidel), so he improvised...
It's a damn shame that Khan is still being allowed to waste valuable oxygen.
Is this just a specific kind of centrifuge used only for nuclear material? Believe it or not, centrifuges are fairly ubiquitous in the labs of the worlds and hospitals as well. You can order them online or by catalog, and some of them are relatively cheap. I find it difficult to believe that Iran could only get centrifuges from the charity of others as if they were some kind of controlled substance.
& you think killing Khan will solve the whole problem.A lot of folks are not looking at the whole thing deeply.Pakistan's nuclear programme has been & is run by the military-how could a single civie do all this??How did he outclass the most ruthless intelligence agency in that corner of the world??How could one civie get Pakistani C-130s to carry cargoes to North Korea AFTER Sept-11th??Why was he pardoned without a scratch????Draw your own conclusions..............
In short,he is nothing but a scapegoat for his government-anyone familiar with the politics of Pakistan can get that.
Is this just a specific kind of centrifuge used only for nuclear material?
Short answer, yes.
And it is not commercially available? Why do they have to get them from rogue scientists? If they have the technology to make nuclear weapons, how do they not have the technology to design a device that rotates at a high rate of speed? They have jets, don't they? Can they build a washing machine? If they can, they can build a centrifuge. Hell, you can even soup up a washing machine and use it as a centrifuge. I just don't get what the significance of the centrifuge is.
And it is not commercially available?
I doubt that they are, as they are only good for one thing and the market is (to say theleast) quite limited. The materials involved in making them are special, as they have to stand up to high levels of radiation...etc.
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