The Islamic Bomb

How another country is joining the nuclear club

He was a brilliant and charming man, a linguist who was liked by his colleagues and suburban Amsterdam neighbors. To be sure, Abdul Qadar Khan did seem a bit inquisitive to his fellow scientists at The Netherlands' top-secret gas centrifuge factory at Almelo, where enriched uranium is produced for nuclear plants around the world. On the other hand, asking questions was normal behavior for a bright young metallurgist who wanted to get ahead. After 17 days at the plant, however, Khan was politely but firmly told to leave Almelo, and went back to work in his Amsterdam laboratory. Shortly afterward, he told friends that he had been asked to return to his native Pakistan and serve in the Economic Affairs Ministry. Sadly, he bade them goodbye, his sojourn in Holland completed.

And, as it now seems, his mission accomplished. When Khan returned to his homeland, only two commercial gas centrifuge plants existed--one in Capenhurst, Britain, and the other in Almelo. The blueprints for both factories are highly classified, since the uranium produced by a gas centrifuge can be used to make nuclear weapons. Today, Khan is apparently director of Pakistan's one and only gas centrifuge plant, which is now under construction near the country's capital, Islamabad. The onetime Almelo adviser managed to carry home critical information about the gas centrifuge process needed to build such a factory, thereby enabling Pakistan to produce its own enriched uranium and, eventually, its own nuclear bomb. Pakistan will be a full-fledged member of the world's nuclear club within two to five years.

Western intelligence experts believe that Pakistan has been trying for at least 15 years to develop a nuclear bomb, primarily to strengthen its defenses against neighboring India. When New Delhi tested its first atomic bomb in 1974, Islamabad stepped up its own efforts. The late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was then Pakistan's Prime Minister, warned that "we will eat leaves and grass, even go hungry" to build the country's own weapon. "There's a Hindu bomb, a Jewish bomb and a Christian bomb," Bhutto once wrote. "There must be an Islamic bomb."

It was in 1974 that Khan got his chance to get into the gas centrifuge plant at Almelo. Owned and operated by a consortium called Urenco, it was administered jointly by Britain, West Germany and The Netherlands. Khan had first come to Holland in 1963 at the age of 27 to enroll in the prestigious Technical University of Delft. He performed well, both there and, later, in the doctoral program at Belgium's Catholic University in Louvain.

In 1972 Khan applied for and won a position in a physics-dynamics laboratory run by the Dutch industrial giant Verenigde Metaalfabrieken-Werkspoor, which was doing research for Almelo. He underwent a very light security check conducted by the Dutch authorities: he simply filled out a questionnaire, claiming that he planned to become a Dutch citizen soon and listing the nationality of his South African bride as Dutch. Certified as clean, Khan two years later was invited to work briefly at Almelo.

While at the gas centrifuge plant, Khan was asked to translate classified documents of a West German uranium enrichment project into Dutch. From these papers, according to a Dutch official, he compiled a complete list of the plant's subcontractors and suppliers and passed it along to Islamabad. Pakistani officials, in turn, put together a shopping list of the materials needed for a gas centrifuge system. They then used dummy companies and agents in Europe to make individual purchases from the list.

Khan might still be at Almelo today if he had not been caught reading secret documents he had not been assigned to translate. Plant officials quickly asked that he be moved back to the Amsterdam laboratory, where he was assigned to a department that had no dealings with Almelo. At the same time, the Dutch intelligence agency Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst began an investigation. They learned from Khan's neighbors that a black Mercedes with diplomatic license plates often visited his house. Before the inquiry progressed further, however, Abdul Qadar Khan left Holland in late 1975 to take up his new "job" with the Economic Affairs Ministry.

Last summer, a Labor Party M.P. asked British officials if they were aware that Pakistan was buying equipment suitable for building a gas centrifuge system. Eventually intelligence agents from several countries, including the U.S., pieced together the Pakistani buying spree and reached the conclusion that Islamabad was buying itself the bomb. Washington, which promptly cut off most of its aid to Pakistan, was caught by surprise: it had persuaded France last year not to sell a nuclear reprocessing plant to Pakistan for fear the country would use it to produce Plutonium for a bomb. It now turned out that Pakistan was already well on its way to making nuclear bombs not from plutonium but from another deadly substance--enriched uranium.

Who is paying for the gas centrifuge plant? Pakistan is a poor nation, and a plant like this one could cost at least $500 million. Many observers believe that Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who has long attempted to obtain an atomic bomb for his own country, is funding the Pakistani project. The Israelis suspect that Gaddafi may have struck some kind of deal with the Pakistanis, perhaps extracting a promise to sell Libya ground missiles fitted with nuclear warheads.

For its part, Pakistan denies that it is building a nuclear bomb or that Gaddafi paid for a gas centrifuge plant. Officials do acknowledge that research is being carried out on uranium enrichment, but they insist the fuel will be used only in nuclear reactors. The Pakistanis, however, appear to be getting a bit protective about the project: when the French Ambassador to Pakistan and his First Secretary visited the ruins of an ancient fort 25 miles south of Islamabad last week, they seemed to have wandered too close to where the gas centrifuge factory is being built. They were set upon by half a dozen unidentified men and beaten with clubs; the ambassador had a front tooth broken, and his aide suffered a concussion.

The Pakistanis also contend that there is no such person as Abdul Qadar Khan. Meanwhile, the Dutch government, which two weeks ago admitted the security slip at Almelo, is deeply embarrassed by the whole affair and is conducting an investigation--albeit four years late.

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