India or Pak neither could have proliferated more then US…
Top Indian nuclear expert helped Iran develop power plant: report
NEW DELHI (AFP) Oct 23, 2003
A leading Indian nuclear scientist is believed to have helped Iran build its nuclear power plant, a report said Thursday.
The Hindustan Times said Dr Y.S.R. Prasad took up an assignment in Iran after he retired in July 2000 as head of the Nuclear Corporation of India.
The revelations come as Tehran begins to yield to international demands to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons and to make a complete declaration of all its past nuclear activities.
Iran had promised Tuesday to provide the information following talks in Tehran with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany.
The Hindustan Times, quoting from a classified government document, said Prasad, who spent years working on India’s atomic energy programmes, did not seek government permission to go to Iran.
It said that while the scientist did not break any rules, the government was now seeking to make it compulsory for India’s nuclear experts to seek government approval for foreign assignments.
It quoted government sources as saying that while New Delhi and Tehran do have a strategic partnership, they do not collaborate in nuclear programmes.
India stunned the world in 1998 by conducting five nuclear tests and declaring itself a nuclear power. Rival neighbour Pakistan conducted its own tests within days.
Meanwhile, a director of an Indian company accused of exporting chemicals to Iraq for its missiles programmes has been denied bail in a New Delhi court, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Hans Raj Shiv was arrested on Tuesday at Delhi’s international airport when he arrived from a trip abroad.
He and his company NEC Engineers, are charged with aiding Saddam Hussein’s attempts to rearm Iraq by supplying prohibited materials.
NEW DELHI—Investigations have confirmed that Dr. YSR Parsad, former Chairman of Nuclear Corporation of India, took up an assignment in Iran after his retirement in July 2000 and helped Iran in building up technical and physical infrastructure for its nuclear power plants.
In addition to this, the Indian media has also confirmed the exchange of scientists between India and Iran in the past. The revelation has come at a critical time, because presently Iran is under great pressure from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to prove to it that Iran’s nuclear programme is a peaceful one.
Iran has already declared that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes and has promised to provide fullest support to the IAEA inspectors. India on the other hand had created a problem for Iran, by first assisting it then
admitting about its support through media. The motive behind this Indian move is to create a rift between the Islamic world, because Pakistan has the nuclear capability and is a declared nuclear weapon state, but she abides by all the international norms regarding the transfer of the nuclear technology, which is prohibited under international law.
It has also been discovered that the scientists who assisted Iran, were picked up by President Abdul Kalam, who himself a top Indian scientist, and went there with his personal recommendation. This proves the direct involvement of the Indian President in Iran’s nuclear programme.
The Hindustan Times, quoting from a classified government document, said Prasad, who spent years working on India's atomic energy programmes, did not seek government permission to go to Iran.
Hmmm...and both India and Pakistan have just reiterated that they will not sign the NPT or CTBT.
as seems everything was done overtly after he retired from the service and that too without any thing transfered. that is not the case with other issues:-).
then too the company NEC was reprimanded and not pardoned off as happeneing in some other parts of the world. law takes it own course.
whereas other incidents happened with full govt support, this thing has been a personal employment by a scientist that cannot be restricted. then all those of u in US, will have to return back.
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*Originally posted by Fraudz: *
Irani bohot chalaak hain, getting help from all quarters, at this rate I woud not be surprised if they had israel helpng them too :D
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As if they have not done that before huh? :D Lest people forget how Khomeini and the Ayatollahs were buying weapons from the Zionist enemy in the early 1980's.
^ oi guvner...i knew it, just wanted to be sarcastic rather than state it..was waiting for someone to take the bait before i open the can o whoop azz, but now you just spoiled my whole plan...ya party pooper..
As if they have not done that before huh? :D Lest people forget how Khomeini and the Ayatollahs were buying weapons from the Zionist enemy in the early 1980's.
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These bearded mullahs turned out to be quite smart. They got the technology from every Tom Dick and Harry. A 1000 MW reactor from Russkies. Centrifuge from pakis and God knows what from India. According to several intelli sources it is just a matter of time for Iran to come out like NK and announce its radio active rod to the world. The question is not IF they will but who will be running the show when they do... where there is a will there is a way.
Interesting response by India to the nuclear fallout from the AQK case. In the past they would have seized on it and trumpeted it to the world as a proof of Pakistan's status as a rogue nation. This time it was fairly guarded and even a statement to the effect that Pakistan was not the only country involved in proliferation. Both sides seem to be realising that there's not much to gain from unnecessary games of one-upmanship any more and are looking at the bigger picture instead.
By Sanjoy Majumder
BBC News Online correspondent in Delhi
India has been uncharacteristically reserved in its response to revelations that a top Pakistani scientist leaked nuclear secrets to several countries.
Both sides are keen not to antagonise the other A year ago, Indian officials would have jumped to add their voice to the chorus of international condemnation.
It would have afforded an easy opportunity to snipe at its long-term rival - bitter exchanges between the two are a recurring sideshow at many global forums.
But clearly, this time, both countries have staked their fortune on a much larger gaming board.
With their recent rapprochement over Kashmir and the first round of peace discussions scheduled for next week, neither side can afford to queer the pitch.
**It is not Pakistan alone which needs to be blamed
Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha **
On Friday, 48 hours after Pakistani scientist AQ Khan publicly confessed to leaking nuclear secrets, Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha indicated that the matter would not end there.
“There are issues which will have to be debated by the IAEA and elsewhere and resolved so that we have more responsible behaviour from countries which have nuclear capability,” he said.
Kashmir pressure
But in a remarkable scaling down of even that level of criticism, Mr Sinha said on Monday that many other countries were involved in spreading nuclear technology.
"I would like to say what it clearly demonstrates is that there is a flourishing black market in nuclear technology.
“It is not Pakistan alone which needs to be blamed for this,” he told Reuters Television.
Many observers say that India clearly has the Kashmir peace talks in mind.
“Sinha’s measured comments are a clear reflection of the Indian decision not to milk the recent revelations to score political points over Islamabad,” writes The Times of India’s Siddhartha Varadarajan.
With India approaching general elections, the governing Bharatiya Janata Party is keen to highlight the India-Pakistan détente in its campaign for re-election.
Delhi is also aware that any sharp comment from its side could invite a strong reaction from Islamabad - potentially damaging the peace process.
Nuclear understanding
There are some who believe Pakistan’s crisis has in any case worked to India’s advantage.
It poses a direct security threat in our region and we have to state our concerns upfront
The Hindu’s Amit Baruah
“It highlight’s India’s position as a responsible nuclear power,” says Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta.
India and Pakistan have also often spoken with one voice during global nuclear policy discussions.
On Sunday at an international security conference in Munich, both countries announced that they had no plans to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Speaking together at a press conference, Indian National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra and Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said they would do the utmost to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
Despite the apparent goodwill between the two sides, there are some in India who want Delhi to take a stronger stance.
Amit Baruah, diplomatic correspondent at The Hindu, says that the revelation that a Pakistani scientist was involved in nuclear proliferation is not one to be taken lightly.
“It poses a direct security threat in our region and we have to state our concerns upfront.”
Acknowledging that India may not wish to upset its equation with Pakistan at the moment, he suggests another way out.
“We could pursue this through multilateral talks, through the IAEA and ensure that there’s full accountability for what Pakistan has been doing,” he told the BBC.
These bearded mullahs turned out to be quite smart. They got the technology from every Tom Dick and Harry. A 1000 MW reactor from Russkies. Centrifuge from pakis and God knows what from India.
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I am sure if Iran get in a hole, they will be ratting on these countries as well? Maybe they already have?
The spotlight should be on good ol’ USA. The hypocrisy of the American position is highlighted in the following article. But, hey, shout as much as you want about principles and justice - WE ARE GOING TO DO WHATEVER WE WANT, you wanna fight?
"…Proposed new U.S. curbs on the proliferation of nuclear weapons are fundamentally hypocritical, U.S. academics, military analysts and peace activists said Wednesday.
‘’(U.S.) President George Bush seems committed to writing a new chapter in the grotesque saga of U.S. nuclear policy: ‘do as we say, not as we do’,‘’ Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS.
…
Solomon said that throughout the nuclear era, ‘‘the U.S. president has claimed the right to play ”nuclear God”, proclaiming which nations have a holy right to nuclear weapons, and which nations would be guilty of a terrible sin by acquiring nuclear weapons’’.
…
‘Preventing further proliferation of nuclear weapons is a vital national security. But the Bush administration has undermined its credibility by pursuing new nuclear weapons programs, and moving towards resuming nuclear testing,’’ Goldring told IPS.
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Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told IPS the Bush administration’s ‘‘rank hypocrisy of nuclear non-proliferation’’ could not be more apparent.
The United States, he said, is already in ‘‘material breach’’ of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which says, ‘‘each of the parties to the treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty of general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.’’
‘‘The Bush administration also stands in anticipatory breach of the so-called negative security assurances that the United States government gave to the NPT non-nuclear weapons states, that it would not use nuclear weapons against them in return for their renewal and indefinite extension of the NPT,’’ said Boyle, author of ‘The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence.’
He said Bush had already ordered the Pentagon to target several non-nuclear weapons states, a move that goes to the very heart of the bargain behind the NPT.
Both Boyle and Solomon also pointed to the U.S. double standard in curbing nuclear weapons in the Arab world but ignoring Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
‘‘In the Middle East, the big nuclear elephant in the living room – which Bush refuses to acknowledge as a problem – is Israel,’’ said Solomon.
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‘‘The U.S. government cannot make a reasonable case as to why it’s OK for Israel to have a stockpile of about 200 nuclear warheads but it’s not OK for any other nation in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons technology,’’ he said.
‘‘As for the U.S. government, it has arrogantly violated its obligations under the (non-proliferation) treaty by not only failing to work toward nuclear disarmament, but also by continuing to develop even more technologically advanced nuclear weapons, including the current push for ‘bunker-busting’ nuclear arms that reflect ongoing Pentagon interest in using nuclear weapons for war-fighting,’’ he added. "
I am sure if Iran get in a hole, they will be ratting on these countries as well? Maybe they already have?
India is the only true friend Iran has in the region. They would not rat on them. Infact, Iranians are such good friends of India that when their PM visited India, he agreed that it was Mulsims that were to be blamed for the riots in gujarat. Tell me which other Muslim country would support India like that?
There is NO WAY Iran would rat on India. Just like many Muslim countries, Iran relies on Indian trade. India has them exactly where they want them :)
The focus of attention are Dr. A.Q. Khan and Pakistan, but obviously could not have executed plans in isolation - other countries are involved in the proliferation and acquisition of nuclear armaments.
“The real WMD proliferators
From the 1970s South Africa was aided and abetted in its nuclear weapons development programme by Israel. The Apartheid government also experimented in chemical and biological weapons. Britain, France and the USA were aware of South Africa’s ambitions but did not intervene.
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In 1979, a U.S. Vela satellite detected a flash of light in the south Atlantic that was later believed to be a nuclear test of a low-yield device. Both Israel and South Africa now stand incriminated, though there was considerable official obfustication. Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, the commander of Simonstown naval base near Cape Town at the time has stated that “the flash was produced by an Israeli_ South African test code-named ‘Operation Phenix’ …The explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected. But they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed-so the Americans were able to pick it up.” The Israeli whistle-blower Mordechai Vananu has confirmed that “the Israelis had helped South Africa detonate a nucleur device in September 1979 in the southern end of the Indian Ocean over the unihabited islands of Prince Edward and Marion” (p.150, ‘By Way of Deception’ by Victor Ostrovsky, 1990). In July 1989 this collaboration culminated in the flight-test of a booster rocket, possibly Israel’s intermediate-range Jericho-2 ballistic missile. Both South Africa and Israel were then signatories of the Partial Test Ban Treaty, and stood in violation of international law. Similarly Germany turned a blind eye to Israel’s sinister ‘Operation Damocles’ – that entailed the “hounding, and occasional murder, of German scientists who were allegedly developing Egyptian rockets and chemical weapons” (The Guardian obituary of Isser Harel, 20 February 2003).
France too is culpable: French premier Guy Mollet (1956-57) is even quoted as saying privately that France “owed” the bomb to Israel – a reference to the French ‘recruitment’ of the Israelis during the Suez campaign.
…
There is a glaring asymmetry in the way Western powers have proliferated and leaked their nuclear know-how, but now stand as judge and jury on Pakistan." http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/january03_index.php?l=47�"=0
“Roots of Pakistan Atomic Scandal Traced to Europe
The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been demonized in the West for selling atomic secrets and equipment around the world, but the trade began in Europe, not Islamabad, according to court documents and experts who monitor proliferation.
…”.
The article goes on to list names, events dates and locations concerning export of restricted material. Here is the full article.
"February 19, 2004
Roots of Pakistan Atomic Scandal Traced to Europe
By CRAIG S. SMITH
ARIS, Feb. 18 — The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been demonized in the West for selling atomic secrets and equipment around the world, but the trade began in Europe, not Islamabad, according to court documents and experts who monitor proliferation.
The records show that industry scientists and Western intelligence agencies have known for decades that nuclear technology was pouring out of Europe despite national export control efforts to contain it.
Many of the names that have turned up among lists of suppliers and middlemen who fed equipment, materials and knowledge to nuclear programs in Pakistan and other aspiring nuclear nations are well-known players in Europe’s uranium enrichment industry, a critical part of many nuclear weapons programs. Some have been convicted of illegal exports before.
The proliferation has its roots in Europe’s own postwar eagerness for nuclear independence from the United States and its lax security over potentially lethal technology. It was abetted, critics say, by competition within Europe for lucrative contracts to bolster state-supported nuclear industries. Even as their own intelligence services warned that Pakistan could not be trusted, some European governments continued to help Pakistan’s nuclear program.
“It was an economic consideration,” said Paul Stais, a former Belgian member of the European Parliament who lobbied unsuccessfully for tighter export controls.
One name to emerge from the international investigations of Dr. Khan’s nuclear trade was that of Urs Tinner, a Swiss engineer who monitored production of centrifuge parts at a factory in Malaysia. The parts were intended for Libya. Mr. Tinner’s father, Friedrich Tinner, also an engineer, came under scrutiny by the Defense Department in the 1970’s and again by Swiss export control authorities and the International Atomic Energy Agency in the last decade, because he was involved in exports to Pakistan and Iraq of technology used in uranium enrichment.
In the 1970’s, Friedrich Tinner was in charge of exports at Vakuum-Apparate-Technik, or VAT, when the company was identified by the Defense Department as shipping items with possible nuclear-related uses to Pakistan, according to documents and VAT company officials. He later set up his own company, now called PhiTec AG, which was investigated by the Swiss in 1996 for trying to ship valves for uranium enrichment centrifuges to Iraq. The Tinners were never found to have broken any laws, Swiss officials said.
“Most of these people were heavily investigated in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s,” said Mark Hibbs, the European editor of the technical journal Nucleonics Week, published by McGraw-Hill.
The problem began with the 1970 Treaty of Almelo, under which Britain, Germany and the Netherlands agreed to develop centrifuges to enrich uranium jointly, ensuring their nuclear power industry a fuel source independent of the United States. Urenco, or the Uranium Enrichment Company, was established the next year with its primary enrichment plant at Almelo, the Netherlands.
Security at Urenco was by most accounts slipshod. The consortium relied on a network of research centers and subcontractors to build its centrifuges, and top-secret blueprints were passed out to companies bidding on tenders, giving engineers across Europe an opportunity to appropriate designs.
Dr. Khan, who worked for a Urenco Dutch subcontractor, Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory, was given access to the most advanced designs, even though he came from Pakistan, which was already known to harbor nuclear ambitions. A 1980 report by the Dutch government on his activities said he visited the Almelo factory in May 1972 and by late 1974 had an office there.
After Dr. Khan returned to Pakistan with blueprints and supplier lists for uranium enrichment centrifuges at the end of 1975, American intelligence agencies predicted that he would soon be shopping for the items needed to build the centrifuges for Pakistan’s bomb. They soon detected a flow of equipment from Europe to Pakistan as Dr. Khan drew on Urenco’s network of suppliers using a trusted group of former schoolmates and friends as agents.
The Dutch government report found that in 1976, two Dutch firms exported to Pakistan 6,200 unfinished rotor tubes made of superstrong maraging steel. The tubes are the heart of Urenco’s advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges.
In 1983, a Dutch court convicted Dr. Khan in absentia on charges of stealing the designs, though the conviction was later overturned on a technicality. Nonetheless, in the late 1980’s, Belgian ministers led delegations of scientists and businessmen to Pakistan, despite warnings from their own experts that they were meeting with people involved in the military application of nuclear technology.
“Every well-informed person knows the inherent danger of an intense collaboration with a country such as Pakistan,” wrote René Constant, director of Belgium’s National Institute of Radioactive Elements in February 1987, chastising Philippe Maystadt, then the country’s minister of economic affairs, after one such visit.
That same year, despite American warnings to Germany that such a sale was imminent, a German firm exported to Pakistan a plant for the recovery of tritium, a volatile gas used to increase the power of nuclear bombs. The company simply called the plant something else to obtain an export license.
“The export control office didn’t even inspect the goods,” said Reinhard Huebner, the German prosecutor who handled the subsequent trial of the company’s chief, Rudolf Ortmayers, and Peter Finke, a German physicist who went to Pakistan to train engineers there to operate the equipment. Both men were sentenced to jail for violating export control laws.
But there were clues that the technology had spread even further: a German intelligence investigation determined that Iraq and possibly Iran and North Korea had obtained uranium-melting expertise stolen from Urenco in 1984, Mr. Hibbs reported in Nucleonics Week several years later.
In 1989, two engineers, Bruno Stemmler and Karl Heinz Schaab, who had worked for Germany’s MAN New Technology, another Urenco subcontractor, sold plans for advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges to Iraq. They went to Baghdad to help solve problems in making the equipment work.
In 1991, after the first Iraq war, international inspectors were stunned to discover the extent of Saddam Hussein’s hidden program. Mr. Schaab was later convicted of treason but only served a little more than a year in jail. Mr. Stemmler died before he could be tried.
David Albright, a former weapons inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he helped retrieve a full set of the blueprints from Iraq after the major combat operations ended last year. United States inspectors have not found evidence that Mr. Hussein had restarted his nuclear program, but Mr. Albright said there were still drawings unaccounted for.
“It’s an unnerving issue,” said Mr. Albright, who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “A lot of nuclear weapons design stuff could be missing in Iraq.”
As recently as last year, German customs agents seized high-tensile-strength aluminum tubes made by a German company and bound for North Korea. The tubes matched the specifications for the housings of Urenco’s uranium-enriching centrifuges.
One name on a list of suppliers to Iran that came to light in recent investigations was Henk Slebos, who studied with Dr. Khan at Delft Technological University in Leuven, Belgium, in the late 1960’s.
In the early 1980’s, Mr. Slebos was arrested for shipping an oscilloscope, used in testing centrifuges, to Dr. Khan in Pakistan. He was convicted and sentenced to a brief prison term in 1985. Mr. Slebos declined to comment for this article.
In 1998, he withdrew five Pakistan-bound shipments that the Dutch authorities had stopped in the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria because they contained “dual use” items, which could be used for uncovventional weapons as well as civilian purposes.
Last September, Mr. Slebos was among the sponsors of an international symposium on advanced materials in Pakistan organized by Dr. Khan. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who was then the Dutch foreign minister and is now NATO’s secretary general, told Dutch members of Parliament that Mr. Slebos was still doing business with Dr. Khan, though he did not elaborate."
