Who was the 4th customer of the Khan network?

[seemslikeadream]

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: Western intelligence remains in the dark about the identity of the “fourth customer” benefiting from the nuclear supply network allegedly operated by Dr AQ Khan.

According to a long report in the Washington Post on Tuesday, “Iran was Khan’s first customer, North Korea his second and Libya his undoing. What troubles US and British officials today is the evidence of a fourth customer yet unknown.”

The report, based on interviews with mostly unidentified US and Pakistani officials, and one identified former Brigadier of the Pakistan Army, Feroz Hassan Khan, now associated with a Pentagon-related think tank in California, goes over known territory but contains a number of facts that had not come to light so far in the press.

The report states that soon after Bush took office, three dozen analysts from around the government gathered for a full-day conference in Chantilly, Virginia, to sift top-secret ntelligence. If al Qaeda obtained a nuclear weapon, they asked, where would it come from? They thought the best place to buy an assembled weapon would be Russia, compared to Pakistan that had few weapons. They came to the conclusion that black market sales posed the greatest risk. In Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, after he was made privy by Washington and London to the AQ Khan network, retired the scientist in March 2001, offering him an advisory position instead. By the time Bush came to office, the CIA and British intelligence had come to the conclusion that Dr Khan was at the center of an international proliferation network supplying uranium equipment to at least one customer in the Middle East, thought to be Libya. Dr Khan not only dealt in designs but also had begun mass production of components. “The US government had a dilemma. The picture was alarming, incomplete and dependent on sensitive intelligence sources. And the man at the center of suspicion had a stature in Pakistan that easily exceeded Musharraf’s,” said the Post report.
more
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_27-10-2004_pg7_50

Did N-Khan help a fourth country?

One key clue is a ship that never arrived. Not long before Libya’s disarmament, scientists in Tripoli placed an order for additional centrifuge parts. Because Khan’s network operated through intermediaries, the Libyans do not know who was going to make the components, or where.
Investigators in Washington, London and Vienna (headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency) said they have been unable to learn. “A more disturbing information is the source of Libya’s small cache of highly enriched uranium. Most troubling are orders, invoices and manifests found in Khan’s overseas records describing shipments that cannot be accounted for by known customers,” the Post said.
The US and IAEA investigators have several suspects for a “fourth customer”, officials named Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but no substantial evidence has surfaced, the daily said.
Since his televised confession and immediate pardon by Pakistan President Mr Pervez Musharraf, Khan has been held in conditions that Pakistani officials liken to “house arrest,” but the US and UN investigators hardly get to question him.
more
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=8&theme=&usrsess=1&id=58178

[htuttle]

1. Saudi Arabia, perhaps?

They'd certainly have the cash, and I could see them wanting to put something like that away for a rainy day. While they might be chummy with the Bush family, I doubt they trust neocons like Cheney, Perle and Wolfowitz (IIRC, Perle sent some veiled threats their way last year).

[seemslikeadream]

2. Unprecedented Peril Forces Tough Calls

In the Oval Office on Oct. 30, 2002, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told Bush he had spoken to Iranian leaders and believed they could still be dissuaded from enriching uranium. According to sources with access to written accounts of their meeting, ElBaradei said Iran wanted to talk and offered to help open a quiet channel. Bush demurred.

The president's advisers were at a stalemate on what to do about Iran. One senior participant in the interagency debate, whose shorthand description matched that of many others, said the Defense Department and Vice President Cheney's office "tended toward a 'regime change' view of Iran," while State said "regime change is nice if you can get it at an acceptable price, but you can't."

That argument had begun nine months earlier, when deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley asked the CIA to assess, among other things, the stability of the Iranian government. The agency's report said Iran was evolving toward democracy and that U.S. attempts to undermine the mullahs would cement them in power. Participants in the debate said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz dismissed the report as "one man's opinion."

In a bid for consensus, Hadley supervised preparation of a national security presidential directive to guide Iran policy. Two officials who read the draft said it contained no more than a sentence on nuclear weapons -- calling for U.S. efforts to delay, disrupt and deter Iran's acquisition. Defense officials tried to insert more muscular language, participants said, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's representatives proposed incentives -- such as U.S. agreement to Iran's entry into the World Trade Organization -- if Iran changed its behavior in ways that could be verified.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62727-2004Oct25_4.html

[KC21304]

3. Syria. They are taking Iraq's place in the Axis of Evil.

[struggle4progress]

4. kick

:kick:

[seemslikeadream]

5. Was kinda interesting wasn't it, struggle4progress

Posted on Wed, Oct. 27, 2004
Iran unveils plant, indicating it will proceed with nuclear program

BY SAEED KOUSHA AND SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON

Knight Ridder Newspapers

.....

Iranian officials told European negotiators in Vienna Wednesday that they wouldn't suspend work on their nuclear program. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened on Iranian television to pull out of the talks if the West failed to soften its stance.

There were no signs of surrender at the plant, heralded at its entrance by a sign reading "Distillation Workshop." Anti-aircraft batteries guarded the facility.

Showing off the maze of pipes, cranes and scaffolding that took 10 years to construct, Madadi said the plant currently produces 8 tons of heavy water a year.

Within five months, he said, the plant is expected to double its output. Madadi said the plant's output would be used only for peaceful purposes.

But the facility remains a question for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog in Vienna scrutinizing Iran's nuclear activities whose inspectors have toured it twice.
"Of all the types of nuclear reactor, why heavy water?" asked one Western diplomat reached by phone in Vienna, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
more
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/10030909.htm

rest of the article here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x937960

[struggle4progress]

6. W&co have really totally screwed up arms control. The work ...

... of a whole generation of diplomats in shambles. eom