Pakistan on Tuesday admitted for the first time that it may have been the source of sensitive nuclear know-how and equipment for Iran's uranium enrichment program, a sophisticated and extensive project which has been kept secret for 18 years.
The admission from the government in Islamabad followed weeks of denial of any involvement in the Iranian projects. It followed Pakistan's disclosure that it was questioning Abdul Qadeer Khan -- the man who masterminded Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons, and a hero in his country -- about possible links with Iran.
Pakistan is under intense pressure from Western countries and from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, to clarify its suspected role in supplying Iran with nuclear information and technology.
The foreign ministry in Islamabad continued to deny that Pakistan had had any role in nuclear proliferation, but conceded that some of its nuclear experts might have acted out of "ambition or greed" in supplying nuclear technology.
In recent weeks, Pakistan has detained three prominent nuclear scientists for questioning, and on Monday it announced it was also "debriefing" Khan, who was removed as the head of the country's main nuclear laboratory three years ago under pressure from Washington.
Khan, revered in Pakistan as the "father of the Islamic bomb" and as the man who achieved Pakistan's nuclear parity with India, worked in the Netherlands in the 1970s at Urenco, the British-Dutch-German consortium which is a world leader in uranium enrichment technology.
After he left the Netherlands and returned home, a Dutch court sentenced him to four years in prison for stealing sensitive designs for centrifuge technology used to enrich uranium to weapons grade.
The verdict was later overturned. But diplomats in Vienna -- the home of the IAEA -- following the labyrinthine development of Pakistan's and Iran's nuclear programs say Pakistan's arrival as a nuclear power in 1998 was due to its copying, modifying and improving the European uranium enrichment blueprint.
UN inspectors who examined Iran's nascent uranium enrichment centre at Natanz this year concluded that the designs were identical to Pakistan's. After 18 years of secretly buying and importing much of the equipment, Tehran admitted it had acquired the material on the international black market.
A lengthy dossier on the Iranian program, supplied to the Vienna agency by Tehran in October, identified some of the sources of the equipment and the middlemen involved.
In recent weeks, IAEA nuclear detectives have visited several capitals around the world as part of their investigation into the Iranian program. They have also demanded cooperation from Pakistan, which they see as a prime -- but far from the sole -- suspect in the Iranian dealings.
"Confronted by the agency with pretty overwhelming evidence, the Pakistanis thought they had better do something," said a diplomat in Vienna.
Earlier this week, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan assured Washington that Islamabad was not leaking any secrets about weapons of mass destruction to other countries.
US press reports also put the spotlight on Pakistan for aiding North Korea in its nuclear weapons program; and with Libya admitting at the weekend that it had built a pilot uranium enrichment centrifuge facility using imported equipment, questions are also being asked about Pakistan's possible role in providing that technology.
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