Drawings of a nuclear warhead that Libya surrendered as part of its decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction are of 1960s Chinese design, but likely came from Pakistan, diplomats and experts told reporters on Sunday.
China is widely assumed to have been Pakistan's key supplier of much of the clandestine nuclear technology used to establish Islamabad as a nuclear power in 1998 and resold to rogue regimes through the black market network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
The drawings appeared to be of a design never used by Pakistan, which went on to develop more modern nuclear weapons, said the diplomats and experts, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Still, they said, they were likely supplied by China as part of the decades-long transfer of technology that Khan used to develop Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
One of them called the drawings "dramatic evidence" of the Chinese-Pakistani nuclear link.
Libya surrendered the drawings in December after its leader, Muammar Qaddafi, volunteered to scrap all research into developing weapons of mass destruction. The blueprints and accompanying documents are now in the US under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
One of the experts said the drawing detailed how to build a warhead for a large ballistic missile, using technology developed by the Chinese in the 1960s that triggers a nuclear blast by a small conventional explosion.
While the instructions on the drawing were in English, some other documents surrendered by Libya along with the blueprints were in Chinese, he said.
He said that if built, the warhead would have weighed more than 450kg. That's too bulky for any delivery system the Libyans possessed but not for the ballistic missiles developed by North Korea and Iran, the other nations said to have been supplied by Khan's network.
While there is no evidence either of those countries were supplied with the same or a similar drawing, "it would be a very nice warhead for those countries," the expert said.
North Korea runs a nuclear weapons program using plutonium. But US officials also believe it has a separate program based on enriched uranium, possibly using technology imported from Pakistan. Pyongyang has denied the allegation.
Iran denies trying to develop nuclear weapons but suspicions persist because it kept secret attempts to enrich uranium for nearly two decades. Although it agreed to open all aspects of its nuclear activities to IAEA perusal late last year, the agency's inspectors recently found designs of advanced enriching equipment the Iranians had kept from them.
Critics say that Iran is not fully honoring an agreement to suspend uranium enrichment, something denied by Tehran, which says it is interested in the process not to make weapons-grade uranium but to generate nuclear power.
Pakistan -- and Khan -- became the focus of an international investigation on the basis of information Libya and Iran gave the Vienna-based IAEA about where they covertly bought nuclear technology that can be used to make weapons.
In the nuclear procurement chain that Khan has confessed to heading, hundreds of millions of dollars was thought to have changed hands over the past 15 years with key middlemen positioned in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Former nuclear weapons inspector David Albright said it was his understanding that the drawings found in Libya were "way beyond anything in the public domain" as far as building a warhead were concerned.
US President George W. Bush called the leaders of Russia and Italy on the weekend to discuss how to check the spread of dangerous weapons and keep them away from terrorists.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS