Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Proliferation in South Asia: Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan

August 15, 2004

In February 2004, as Libya renounced its nuclear weapons programs and began to divulge its related secrets, disturbing facts came to light about the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. Dr. Khan was revealed as the leader of an extensive black market for nuclear technology. The proliferation network, the full extent of which is still unknown, reached beyond Libya to Iran and North Korea.

PROFILE OF DR. A.Q. KHAN:

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan is widely recognized as a national hero in Pakistan because of his central role in developing the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. He was born in Bhopal, India and he received his formal post-secondary education in Germany.

From 1972-75 Dr. Khan worked at the Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory, an engineering firm in Amsterdam and a subcontractor to URENCO; a Dutch, British and German consortium specializing in the manufacture of nuclear equipment. By late 1974, Dr. Khan had an office in the main uranium enrichment facility of URENCO, located in Almelo, The Netherlands. 1975: While in Pakistan, Dr. Khan was asked by then Prime Minister Bhutto to head Pakistan’s uranium enrichment program. 1976: Dr. Khan left Europe with secret URENCO documents that detailed the construction of a uranium centrifuge. (He was convicted of stealing the centrifuges design in abstentia in The Netherlands in 1983, only to have the conviction thrown out years later due to a technical error.) Dr. Khan began ordering parts needed to create a uranium centrifuge from companies around the world that also supplied URENCO with its equipment in order to create an indigenous source of HEU for Pakistan. 31 July 1976: Dr. Khan founded the Engineering Research Laboratories. Within a few short years, Dr. Khan’s new laboratories developed a uranium enrichment plant. 1998: Pakistan tested a nuclear device. The uranium used in this device was produced at Dr. Khan’s laboratories.

A.Q. KHAN'S PROLIFERATION ACTIVITIES:

Dr. Khan helped build Pakistan’s nuclear program, but he also allegedly supplied materials and designs to North Korea, Iran, Libya, and Iraq.

North Korea: Over the course of a decade beginning in the early 1990s, Dr. Khan made 13 trips to North Korea and reportedly passed on centrifuge equipment and designs and nuclear fuel. While the Pakistani government has continually denied involvement with these activities, Dr. Khan has stated that several senior members of the military knew about and helped coordinate the transfer of technology. It is known that North Korea has helped Pakistan with ballistic missile technology and the nuclear material given to North Korea is suspected to be part of a trade. Dr. Khan is known to have traveled to Pyongyang with several government delegations. He also allegedly helped organize Pakistani military flights carrying nuclear materials to North Korea.

Iran: The United States and the international community have for some time suspected that Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear weapons program. Cooperation between Iran and Pakistan reportedly began in the mid-to-late 1980s. As with North Korea, initial cooperation began as Iran sought a centrifuge design. The same centrifuge design Dr. Khan stole from URENCO was transferred to Iran. This provided Iran with the blueprints for uranium enrichment technology, putting it a long way towards developing a nuclear weapon. The official Pakistani government response to these allegations is that the assistance provided to Iran was a private enterprise undertaken by some of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists. Pakistan has been a state ruled by a hard-line military regime for most of its history, including under the current Musharraf regime. According to reports, Pakistani scientists were followed both in Pakistan and abroad by the Pakistani security service and thus, the Pakistani government must have known about the proliferation activities.

Libya: After Libya decided to abandon its WMD program in late 2003, the government identified Dr. Khan as having a role in its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The cooperation between Pakistan and Libya began in the early 1990s. Dr. Khan has admitted to meeting with Libyan agents in Istanbul in 1990. In early 2004, documents and materials found in Libya indicated that the centrifuge designs were based on G-1 or G-2 designs (also known as P-1 and P-2 models), known to be used by Pakistan for its own program. Libya handed over these designs for a centrifuge as well as designs for a nuclear bomb to the IAEA and the United States. The design for the bomb was actually an old Chinese model that had been turned over to the Pakistanis more than a decade before.

Iraq: Several reports have suggested Dr. Khan provided nuclear technology to Iraq. As the first Gulf War loomed in late 1990, Dr. Khan allegedly traveled to the United Arab Emirates and met with Iraqi security officials to whom he offered designs of a nuclear weapon. Just before the latest conflict between the United States and Iraq broke out in 2003, Pakistani intelligence reports were featured in an article by Secretary Raman (a former official in the Indian Government) stating that Dr. Khan had met with Iraqi officials in the UAE. The Iraqi officials asked Dr. Khan to help them smuggle Iraqi WMD out of Iraq into Syria and eventually to Pakistan in order to hinder the efforts of UN inspectors. According to these reports, Dr. Khan agreed to the request for help and in October 2002 a Pakistani aircraft on its way home to Pakistan stopped in Syria and picked up WMD material. These allegations of Pakistani aid to Iraq have not been confirmed by other sources.

THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT'S REACTION TO DR. KHAN'S PROLIFERATION ACTIVITY

The extent to which the Pakistani government was involved in the activities of Dr. Khan remains unclear. Many analysts suggest the government’s position was somewhere between passive acceptance and active (albeit clandestine) participation, but few claim the government was completely unaware. Dr. Khan and other weapons scientists were followed by Pakistani security officials at all times and were associated with the elite of the military establishment. Revelations of Dr. Khan’s activities placed President Musharraf in the position of either punishing one of Pakistan’s most famous and beloved countrymen and undermining support for his regime, or facing criticism and possible sanctions (economic or military) from important partners, particularly the United States. Musharraf fired Khan from his high government position, but he did not seek to strip the nuclear scientist of the profits he reaped from his years of proliferation activity. On February 5, 2004, one day after Dr. Khan admitted his guilt on national television, he was pardoned by Musharraf for his proliferation activity. No other government has been allowed to question Dr. Khan about the nuclear black market he built. August 2004

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