Pak, Libya nukes of Chinese origin

Investigators have identified China as the origin of nuclear weapons designs found in Libya last year, exposing yet another link in a chain ...

Investigators have identified China as the origin of nuclear weapons designs found in Libya last year, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation that passed nuclear secrets through Pakistan to other countries in Asia and the West Asia, according to government officials and arms experts. The package of documents was turned over to US officials in November following Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction and open his country’s weapons laboratories to international inspection.

The blueprints, which were flown to Washington last month, have been analysed by experts from the US, Britain and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The device depicted in the blueprints appears similar to a weapon known to have been tested by China in the 1960s.

Implosion bombs use precision-timed conventional explosives to squeeze a sphere of fissile material and trigger a nuclear chain reaction. US intelligence officials concluded years ago that China provided early assistance to Pakistan in building its first nuclear weapon—assistance that appears to have ended in the 1980s.

Story continues below this ad

Still, weapons experts familiar with the blueprints expressed surprise at what they described as a wholesale transfer of sensitive nuclear technology.

The designs were later resold to Libya by Pakistani scientists under Dr A.Q. Khan. The packet of documents, some of them written in Chinese characters, contain detailed, step-by-step instructions for assembling an implosion-type nuclear bomb that could fit atop a large ballistic missile. Also included were technical instructions for manufacturing individual components for the device, the officials and experts said. ‘‘It was just what you’d have on the factory floor: It tells you what torque to use on the bolts and what glue to use on the parts,’’ one weapons expert who has reviewed the blueprints said in an interview. He described the designs as ‘‘very, very old’’ but ‘‘very well-engineered’’.

The documents at the centre of the investigation were handed over to IAEA inspectors in two ordinary shopping bags of white plastic. The bags were from a Pakistani clothing shop whose name—Good Looks Tailor—and Islamabad address was printed on the bags in red letters.

One bag contained drawings and blueprints of different sizes; the other contained instructions on how to build not only a bomb but its essential components. The documents seemed a hodgepodge: some in good condition, others smudged and dirty; some professionally printed, others hand-written. David Albright, a nuclear physicist and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq said the design appears deliverable by N Korea’s Nodong missile, Iran’s Shahab-3 missile and ballistic missiles Iraq was pursuing just prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Story continues below this ad

While such a bomb would be difficult to deliver by air, ‘‘you could drive it away in a pickup truck,’’ the expert said. The primary documents were entirely in English, while a few ancillary papers were in Chinese. The package also included articles on nuclear weapons from US weapons laboratories.

—LAT-WP