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Musharraf confirms that North Korea's nuclear technology came from Pakistan

Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, confirmed Tuesday for the first time that a Pakistani nuclear scientist had provided North Korea with centrifuge machines that could be used to make fuel for an atomic bomb, a Japanese news agency reported.

In an interview here with the agency, Kyodo News, Musharraf said the former head of his country's nuclear program, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, had sent "centrifuges -- parts and complete" to North Korea. The Pakistani leader did not divulge the number of centrifuges that arrived in North Korea, saying, "I do not exactly remember the number."

Musharraf also said Khan might have sent North Korea uranium hexafluoride, which can be enriched in centrifuges and then processed into fuel for civilian nuclear reactors or atomic warheads.

The president's statements are likely to bolster American contentions that North Korea has a covert uranium enrichment program and complicate the six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear program that are scheduled to resume next week.

Musharraf reiterated his long-held position that that he and other members of Pakistan's powerful military had not known that Khan was shipping nuclear hardware abroad. But American experts on the spread of nuclear weapons said the disclosure raised new questions about the Pakistani military's possible role in nuclear proliferation.

Khan publicly confessed in January 2004 to having provided nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, but he gave few details. Musharraf pardoned the scientist, citing his status as a national hero. Pakistani officials are investigating Khan, but Musharraf has barred American or UN investigators from directly questioning him.

The general's comments were Pakistan's first official acknowledgment of nuclear technology transfers to North Korea. Khan, who is under virtual house arrest in Islamabad, is believed to have run the largest nuclear smuggling ring in history.

American nonproliferation experts said the disclosure was not a surprise, since American officials had long suspected that Pakistani centrifuges had been shipped to North Korea.

North Korean officials have denied having a uranium enrichment program -- one of the issues that have deadlocked the six-nation talks -- but say they have made nuclear weapons fueled with plutonium. The parties have continued discussions this week and are trying to make headway on a "statement of principles" to guide future negotiations.

One method North Korea may have used to make a bomb would have involved extracting plutonium from spent fuel rods at its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon. But American officials have also accused it of mounting a separate, covert effort to use a second, more easily hidden method, that of using centrifuges to enrich uranium.

The disclosure of a centrifuge shipment appears to strengthen but also complicate the American position. The presence in North Korea of centrifuges sent by . Khan would increase the need for a final agreement to guarantee the removal of the machines. But locating them all, and confirming that others are not being hidden, could prove difficult. Pakistani and American experts have said it is plausible that Khan successfully smuggled nuclear bomb designs and other small items out of Pakistan. But they said it would be virtually impossible for him to have removed large centrifuge machines from the country's tightly guarded nuclear labs and ship them out of the country without the military knowing.

"I think it would be absolutely shocking that they not have some idea," said George Perkovich, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "There were planes flying back and forth."

In the interview, Musharraf played down the significance of the shipments, saying Khan was not an expert in other techniques and technologies needed for developing a bomb.

"Dr. A.Q. Khan's part is only enriching the uranium to weapons grade," Musharraf said. "He does not know about making the bomb. He does not know about the trigger mechanism. He does not know about the delivery system."
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