Pak is most dangerous country in world : US report
January 23,2003
Washington: Pakistan is the “most dangerous” country in the world right now and if the US is “incinerated” any time it will be because of the highly enriched uranium that was given to al-Qaeda by Islamabad, the influential “New Yorker” magazine reported quoting an American non-proliferation expert. An article by noted investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the latest issue of the magazine quoted the expert as having said there is an "awful lot of al-Qaeda sympathy within Pakistan’s nuclear programme.
“Right now, the most dangerous country in the world is Pakistan. If we’re incinerated next week, it’ll be because of the HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium) that was given to al-Qaeda by Pakistan,” the article said. The article titled “What the Administration knew about Pakistan and the North Korean nuclear programme” quoted a top secret CIA document to say that since 1997 Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead design information and weapon-testing data with the Pyongyang regime.
“Pakistan, one of the Bush Administration’s important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb,” it said noting that the document’s most politically sensitive information was about Pakistan. The document known as National Intelligence Estimate was classified as top secret SCI (for sensitive compartmental information) and tightly restricted and was for distribution within the government. Hersh quoted a former Pakistani official telling him that his government’s contacts with North Korea increased dramatically in 1997 when Pakistan’s economy had floundered and there was “no more money” to pay for North Korean missile support.
Pakistan had started paying for missiles by providing “some of the know-how and the specifics” in nuclear bomb technology, according to the official. The official quoted by Hersh said Pakistan helped North Korea conduct a series of “cold tests”, simulated nuclear explosions, using natural uranium, which are necsssary to determine whether a nuclear device will detonate properly. Pakistan had also given the North Korean intelligence service advice on “how to fly under the radar,” as the former official put it – that is how to hide nuclear research from American satellites and US and South Korean intelligence agents.
The CIA report also said that in 1997 Pakistan began paying for missile sytems obtained from North Korea in part by sharing its nuclear-weapon secrets. According to the report, Pakistan sent prototypes of high-speed centrifuge machines to North Korea, and, sometime in 2001, it said, North Korean scientists began to enrich uranium in significant quantities. “Pakistan also provided data on how to build and test a uranium-triggered nuclear weapon,” the report said. The article also quoted an American intelligence official as having said about the CIA report. “It points a clear finger at the Pakistanis. The technical stuff is crystal clear – not hedged and not ambivalent.” North Korea, the report said, had begun using a second method to acquire fissile material. This time, instead of using spent fuel, scientists were trying to produce weapons grade uranium from natural uranium – with Pakistani technology.
Original Report : http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?030127fa_fact