A newly released statement by former top Pakistani nuclear scientist and proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan indicates that China in 1982 supplied his nation with a basic nuclear-weapon design and enough weapon-grade uranium to power two nuclear bombs, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Sept. 24).
(Nov. 13) -
Former top Pakistani nuclear scientist and proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan, shown in February. Khan alleged in a recently disclosed letter that his country received nuclear-weapon material and schematics from China (Aamir Qureshi/Getty Images).
"Upon my personal request, the Chinese minister ... had gifted us 50 kg (kilograms) of weapon-grade enriched uranium, enough for two weapons," as part of a nuclear pact reached years before by Chinese leader Mao Zedong and Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Khan wrote after admitting in early 2004 to spreading nuclear data to Iran, Libya and North Korea (see GSN, Oct. 5).
Khan and two other Pakistani officials had years earlier provided Chinese counterparts with schematics produced in Europe for an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge, the scientist wrote in a five-page outline of Islamabad's nuclear cooperation with Beijing.
"Chinese experts started coming regularly to learn the whole technology," which was intended to boost China's enrichment capacity for producing nuclear-weapon material. Personnel from Pakistan helped to "put up a centrifuge plant" in China," according to Khan: "We sent 135 C-130 plane loads of machines, inverters, valves, flow meters, pressure gauges. ... Our teams stayed there for weeks to help and their teams stayed here for weeks at a time."
In exchange, Pakistan received 15 tons of Chinese uranium hexafluoride, an intermediate product in the enrichment process.
Using the material in its gas centrifuges, Pakistan was able to begin production of weapon-grade uranium in 1982. Fear that Israel or India might launch airstrikes on Pakistan's nuclear facilities, though, prompted Islamabad to request a loan of highly enriched uranium from Beijing that same year, Khan wrote.
Pakistan stored the uranium for three years, then offered to return the material after producing several nuclear weapons with uranium produced indigenously.
In response, Beijing said "that the HEU loaned earlier was now to be considered as a gift ... in gratitude" for Islamabad's earlier nuclear assistance, according to Khan. Pakistan quickly converted the material into cores for two nuclear weapons, he said.
The Post said it was able to determine that the letter, supplied by a British journalist, was written by Khan. It also verified many of Khan's claims.
The actions did not breach the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty because neither country then had joined the pact and their nuclear arsenals did not target "any country in particular," Khan argued. China has since become an NPT state.
Khan's statements confirmed longstanding U.S. intelligence conclusions about China's nuclear collaboration with Pakistan, government sources said.
Although Washington has never pursued punitive action against Beijing for its actions, one U.S. official said the United States once directly accused China behind closed doors of providing nuclear-weapon assistance to its western neighbor.
"We did confront them, and they denied it," said Fred McGoldrick, who served as a high-level State Department nonproliferation official under former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Outside the Chinese-Pakistani exchanges outlined by Khan, "we are not aware of cases where a nuclear weapon state has transferred HEU to a non-nuclear country for military use," said Hans Kristensen, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project.
Responding last week to Khan's recently disclosed assertions, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated only that Beijing "strictly adheres to the international duty of prevention of proliferation it shoulders and strongly opposes ... proliferation of nuclear weapons in any forms."
Addressing Washington's failure to take a public stance against Beijing over the uranium exchange, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said: "The United States has worked diligently and made progress with China over the past 25 years. As to what was or wasn't done during the Reagan administration, I can't say" (Smith/Warrick, Washington Post, Nov. 13).
Pakistan today said the Post report was "baseless," Agence France-Presse reported.
"Pakistan strongly rejects the assertions in the article that is evidently timed to malign Pakistan and China," the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Nov. 13).