Pakistani scientist says he saw three North Korean nuclear bombs: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) Apr 13, 2004
Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan told interrogators he was shown three nuclear devices at a secret underground nuclear plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times said Tuesday.

Although US officials were unclear about Khan's ability to discern a real nuclear device from a mock-up during his visit, his account if true would roughly match previous US Central Intelligence Agency estimates of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the daily said.

US Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to cite the intelligence report when he meets with Chinese leaders Tuesday in Beijing, the daily said quoting US officials, who declined to discuss it in detail saying it was "too sensitive."

The account of Khan's 1999 visit to North Korea has been provided in classified briefings to nations within reach of North Korea's missiles, Asian and American officials who were briefed by the Pakistanis told the daily. Pakistan does not allow US intelligence agencies to interrogate Khan directly.

Khan, who has been a national hero in Pakistan since he helped test its first nuclear bomb in 1998, also told interrogators he began dealing with North Korea on the sale of equipment for a second way of producing nuclear weapons as early as the late 1980s.

However, he said he began major shipments of equipment for the enrichment of uranium in the late 1990s, after North Korea's plutonium program was frozen under an agreement with Washington that the secretive communist country has since renounced.

Khan sent Pyongyang both the designs for the centrifuges used to enrich uranium and a small number of complete centrifuges, as well as a "shopping list" of equipment it needed to produce thousands of the machines, said the officials briefed by the Pakistanis.

"We think they've pretty much bought everything on the list, with the possible exception of a few components," a US official said.

The sources said Khan said the secret underground nuclear plant he visted was different from North Korea's main nuclear plant at Yongbyon.

"It was about an hour out of the capital (Pyongyang)," a senior Asian official told the daily. "But it's not clear in what direction."

United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and North Korea have held two rounds of talks which so far have failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.

The US, Japan and South Korea decided at a meeting last week in San Francisco that the third meeting should be held no later than the end of June.

WAR.WIRE