A Tale of Two Countries: Comparing India and Pakistan’s Economies
Zafar Anjum and Syeda Quratulain October 22, 2002
#121 Posted by ZafarA on October 28, 2002 9:14:26 pm
Reply RLeonard #107
`` By flavoring potato chips in sambar you wold probably target only the high-born Brahmins who are not Dravids,``
What? Only Brahmins eat sambar? What about rasam?
``...if you need to target the Dravid sgement you would have to package it as `` Sweet Tamil Renaissance`` potato chips``
Excellent name suggestion, but what does the Sweet Tamil Renaissance Lajawab Portato Chip actually taste of???
`` - demographics of TN suggest that this would be prudent because Brahmins make up about 2 % of TN.``
I am not convinced that Dravids, Brahmins or not, do not eat sambar.
`` By flavoring potato chips in sambar you wold probably target only the high-born Brahmins who are not Dravids,``
What? Only Brahmins eat sambar? What about rasam?
``...if you need to target the Dravid sgement you would have to package it as `` Sweet Tamil Renaissance`` potato chips``
Excellent name suggestion, but what does the Sweet Tamil Renaissance Lajawab Portato Chip actually taste of???
`` - demographics of TN suggest that this would be prudent because Brahmins make up about 2 % of TN.``
I am not convinced that Dravids, Brahmins or not, do not eat sambar.
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#120 Posted by Tipu on October 28, 2002 7:52:31 pm
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#119 Posted by arjun_m on October 28, 2002 2:18:05 pm
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#117 Posted by Urstruly on October 28, 2002 9:47:15 am
Arjunm
You have lowered yourself to attribute lies even to your nephew? Read #111. I think poster is a Hindu, exhonorating Mr. Khan this time.
#116 Posted by alphaHussain on October 28, 2002 9:28:12 am
http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Pakistan/AQKhan.html
In 1983, a court in Amsterdam sentenced Abdul Qadeer Khan to fours years in prison for stealing nuclear technology. Two years later, an appeals court quashed the sentence for ``failure to properly deliver a summons to him.`` By then Abdul Qadeer Khan had run away to Pakistan and was hiding there under government protection. Foreign journalists trying to locate him were picked up and beaten by Pakistan`s secret services.
``In late July 1979, unidentified men stopped and beat severely the French Ambassador and his First Secretary as they were driving by Khan`s laboratories in Kahuta. A few weeks later in August a journalist for the Financial Times named Chris Sherwell trying to locate Khan`s house to conduct an interview in Islamabad was beaten up and then arrested and charged with fictitious crimes, forcing him to leave the country. Later a British diplomat`s son was detained by police after losing his way in the Islamabad district that houses Khan [Weissman and Krosney 1981; pp. 193], [Henderson 1993].``
Abdul Qadeer Khan`s claims to have developed the technology ``cannot be taken seriously, to say the least.``
This is how he stole the technology-
Since Khan had lived in Europe from 1961 on and was married to a Dutch national (as the Dutch security service BVD believed) the very personable Khan had little trouble getting a security clearance - a limited security clearance. Curiously Khan`s wife Henny was not Dutch though, but a Dutch-speaking South African holding a British passport.
Elementary principals of security were not, it seems, observed by any part of the URENCO establishment. Routine procedures, such as wearing identification badges marked with the level of clearance appear to have been unknown. Once someone gained access to part of a facility with one level of clearance, there seem to have been few if any barriers to moving to higher level areas. The customary practice of checking the security clearance level of a person before signing out to classified documents to them appears to have been ignored.
Within a week of starting with FDO A. Q. Khan was sent to the UCN enrichment facility in Almelo, Netherlands. A visit to an external facility would normally require the transmittal of security paperwork to be granted access. This procedure was ignored by both FDO and UCN, because Khan was not cleared to visit the UCN facility, though he would do so repeatedly during his employment.
The multi-lingual engineer was tasked with translating highly classified technical documents describing the centrifuges in detail. In the course of this work, he often took the documents home, with FDO`s consent, even though this was also a breach of normal procedure. In his first two years Khan worked with two early centrifuge designs, the CNOR and SNOR machines, then in late 1974 UCN asked Khan to translate highly classified design documents for two advanced German machines, the G-1 and G-2. These represented the most sophisticated industrial enrichment technology in the world at the time.
Khan spent 16 days over the course of a month in the highest security area of the Almelo facility while studying these machines. During this period he had unsupervised access, and was noted roaming around, writing notes in a foreign script, but with the lax security culture no attempts to stop him or investigate his activities [Weissman and Krosney 1981; pp. 175-179], [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 362-364].
Shahid-ur-Rehman relates in his book The Long Road to Chagai that Khan wrote to the Prime Minister in September 1974 offering his services to Pakistan, which means that he had definitely begun his espionage activities by the time he went to work with the G-2 and G-2. Evidence of the effect of Khan`s passing of information on centrifuge technology and design, and on the URENCO component suppliers, to Pakistan can be seen in the initiation of the Pakistani purchase of components for the uranium enrichment program beginning in August 1975.
In January 1976, on (according to Khan) the invitation of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he suddenly left Europe with his family before his espionage was detected. The Khans`s departure was deceptive, Henny wrote to neighbor`s saying they were on vacation and Abdul had suddenly fallen ill. Khan later sent a letter of resignation, effective in March, to FDO from Pakistan.
Khan, because of the secrecy enveloping Pakistan`s nuclear program, has lived heavily guarded by security men.
In 1983, a court in Amsterdam sentenced Abdul Qadeer Khan to fours years in prison for stealing nuclear technology. Two years later, an appeals court quashed the sentence for ``failure to properly deliver a summons to him.`` By then Abdul Qadeer Khan had run away to Pakistan and was hiding there under government protection. Foreign journalists trying to locate him were picked up and beaten by Pakistan`s secret services.
``In late July 1979, unidentified men stopped and beat severely the French Ambassador and his First Secretary as they were driving by Khan`s laboratories in Kahuta. A few weeks later in August a journalist for the Financial Times named Chris Sherwell trying to locate Khan`s house to conduct an interview in Islamabad was beaten up and then arrested and charged with fictitious crimes, forcing him to leave the country. Later a British diplomat`s son was detained by police after losing his way in the Islamabad district that houses Khan [Weissman and Krosney 1981; pp. 193], [Henderson 1993].``
Abdul Qadeer Khan`s claims to have developed the technology ``cannot be taken seriously, to say the least.``
This is how he stole the technology-
Since Khan had lived in Europe from 1961 on and was married to a Dutch national (as the Dutch security service BVD believed) the very personable Khan had little trouble getting a security clearance - a limited security clearance. Curiously Khan`s wife Henny was not Dutch though, but a Dutch-speaking South African holding a British passport.
Elementary principals of security were not, it seems, observed by any part of the URENCO establishment. Routine procedures, such as wearing identification badges marked with the level of clearance appear to have been unknown. Once someone gained access to part of a facility with one level of clearance, there seem to have been few if any barriers to moving to higher level areas. The customary practice of checking the security clearance level of a person before signing out to classified documents to them appears to have been ignored.
Within a week of starting with FDO A. Q. Khan was sent to the UCN enrichment facility in Almelo, Netherlands. A visit to an external facility would normally require the transmittal of security paperwork to be granted access. This procedure was ignored by both FDO and UCN, because Khan was not cleared to visit the UCN facility, though he would do so repeatedly during his employment.
The multi-lingual engineer was tasked with translating highly classified technical documents describing the centrifuges in detail. In the course of this work, he often took the documents home, with FDO`s consent, even though this was also a breach of normal procedure. In his first two years Khan worked with two early centrifuge designs, the CNOR and SNOR machines, then in late 1974 UCN asked Khan to translate highly classified design documents for two advanced German machines, the G-1 and G-2. These represented the most sophisticated industrial enrichment technology in the world at the time.
Khan spent 16 days over the course of a month in the highest security area of the Almelo facility while studying these machines. During this period he had unsupervised access, and was noted roaming around, writing notes in a foreign script, but with the lax security culture no attempts to stop him or investigate his activities [Weissman and Krosney 1981; pp. 175-179], [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 362-364].
Shahid-ur-Rehman relates in his book The Long Road to Chagai that Khan wrote to the Prime Minister in September 1974 offering his services to Pakistan, which means that he had definitely begun his espionage activities by the time he went to work with the G-2 and G-2. Evidence of the effect of Khan`s passing of information on centrifuge technology and design, and on the URENCO component suppliers, to Pakistan can be seen in the initiation of the Pakistani purchase of components for the uranium enrichment program beginning in August 1975.
In January 1976, on (according to Khan) the invitation of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he suddenly left Europe with his family before his espionage was detected. The Khans`s departure was deceptive, Henny wrote to neighbor`s saying they were on vacation and Abdul had suddenly fallen ill. Khan later sent a letter of resignation, effective in March, to FDO from Pakistan.
Khan, because of the secrecy enveloping Pakistan`s nuclear program, has lived heavily guarded by security men.
#115 Posted by arjun_m on October 28, 2002 9:28:12 am
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#114 Posted by snow on October 28, 2002 9:28:12 am
All this brouhaha about Dr. Khan stealing nuclear secrets is just hogwash. All the countries that possess nuclear capabilities today did not discover the methods anew/independently. Israel, India, France, USA, China, Russia etc. etc. did not discover nuclear secrets independently, they worked off of previous discoveries and known research. Thats how science works.
The problem with Dr. Khan`s `discovery` was that he took it and passed it along to Pakistan without proper approval, permission from the powers that be. Thats all.
Whats the world going to do about it ? We have the technology now... suck on this.
The problem with Dr. Khan`s `discovery` was that he took it and passed it along to Pakistan without proper approval, permission from the powers that be. Thats all.
Whats the world going to do about it ? We have the technology now... suck on this.
#113 Posted by alphaHussain on October 28, 2002 9:28:12 am
From Der Spiegel, Feb. 20, 1989
Abdul Qadir khan stole nuclear technology
[FROM DER SPIEGEL, FEB. 20, 1989]
West German firms supplied parts and know-how.
The laboratory is hidden in a desert at the foot of the Kashmir mountains. Anti-aircraft artillery protects the area, soldiers guard the doorways into and out of the laboratories, storehouses, and underground vaults.
In the laboratory, generators whir, selected scientists operate highly sensitive aggregates; measuring instruments, vacuum pumps, and automated precision tools work around the clock.
In the nuclear plant, which forms part of the nuclear center of Pinstech near Rawalpindi, elements for the Islamic bomb are produced in strict secrecy--with machinery made in Germany.
The German equipment--for the time being the last delivery--was tested on site by Peter Finke, 45, on behalf of the Gelnhausen-based firm New Technologies (NTG). In July last year, the physicist showed his Pakistani colleagues for 2 weeks how to operate the complicated glove-compartment plant for the recovery of tritium.
Since then the scientist (`I am a pacifist`) has had pangs of consicence; possibly the equipment could be `converted,` he says. He stresses that anyway, a `pure training plant` was supplied--allegedly, in order to clean the tritium-contaminated Pakistani nuclear reactor in Karachi, which is, however, 1,100 km away.
Radioactive tritium is sold on the international black market of weapons-grade nuclear products at even higher prices than plutonium. A few grams of this gas are sufficient to increase the power of an explosive `substantially,` says nuclear weapons scientist Gerhard Locke, 56, of the Euskirchen Fraunhofer Institute. Therefore, `the second bomb generation of the lighter type` cannot do `without tritium,` he says.
However, the artificially produced superheavy hydrogen decomposes quickly into helium. Therefore, it must be constantly renewed.
That is precisely what the NTG plant can do: Every day, five grams of tritium can be recovered--a quantity which according to Locke is `incredibly large.` That is why Albert Farwick, chief of the Nanau public prosecution which is investigating NTG, considers `some civil use practically inconceivable.`
There is no doubt that Munir Ahmed Khan, chief of the Pakistan Nuclear Authority, with whom Finke already had a cup of tea, has secretly developed his country into a nuclear power; the bomb puzzle is complete. He had many individual parts--ranging from transformer sheets to uranium conversion--supplied by small West German firms, using a network of agents to this end.
The special pipes and supersolid steel from Singen and Saarbruecken, the mass spectrometers and magnets from Bremen and Bonn were made-to-measure for Khan`s program which is carried out in a number of nuclear centers:
In Rawalpindi, where in addition to the bomb plant, a 24-year-old U.S. research reactor is in operation and a reprocessing plant produces about 20 kg of plutonium every year;
In Kahuta, Abdil-Kadir Khan, who is admired as `the new Einstein,` meanwhile has produced more than 100 kg highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, using ultra-highspeed centrifuges;
At the Dera-Ghazi-Khan center, natural uranium is pulverized and converted into uranium hexafluoride, the initial product for further processing, in three conversion plants supplied by the Freiburg businessman Albrecht Migule for DM15 million.
The Pakistani `atom shopping` has often had Bonn`s official approval. The Federal Economics Office (BAW) in Eschborn approved the export of an electronically controlled miling machine of the Munich-based Friedrich Deckel AG, which a secret U.S. study assesses as `extremely useful` for the `production of elements of a nuclear explosive system;` the Economics Ministry rejected as `unacceptable and irrelevant` the U.S. demand to guarantee that the machine not be used in the nuclear industry.
The export of a special press to compact hard-metal powder, which was supplied by Dieffenbacher GmbH & Co in the Swabian town of Eppingen in 1985, was also approved, even though the purpose of the machine (price DM1.3 million) was not kept secret. The responsible officials knew that the isostatic hot press was intended `for use in an ammunition factory for the manufacture of heavy-metal cores for projectiles.`
What types of cores could be meant was discovered post facto by experts of the Federal Research Ministry: `A highly efficient nuclear explosive` must be compressed to the largest possible extent, and `the easiest way` to achieve this is by using a press that is hardly different from the Dieffenbacher model.
The press and the milling machine, made in Germany, were so-called dual-use goods that can also be used for peaceful purposes and are therefore not contained in the embargo lists. However, the U.S. Administration had warned Bonn in time about such deals. U.S. intelligence services reported in 1979 that with the blueprints that he stole in Almelo, in the Netherlands, Abdil Khan was now in a position to build a uranium enrichment plant. To this end, he would buy `equipment on the European market,` they said.
U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt at the time that `we must be careful and prevent this program from beng completed.` U.S. experts specifically went to Bonn to instruct the responsible officials. They told them that two firms, the Hanau-based Leybold-Heraeus and the Renningen-based Team Industries, were already `doing business.`
Several weeks later, two managers of the enterprises mentioned informed the Economics Ministry that the deals had been carried out. Team Industries had just shipped 31 frequency converters to Pakistan, highly sensitive instruments that are used for the power supply of uranium centrifuges. Leydold-Heraeus manager Gotthard Lerch reported that his firm had supplied valves, vacuum pumps, brazing furnaces, measuring instruments, and a gas purifying plant `in the past 3 years`--together `worth DM1.3 million.`
Lerch also said that of course, `it cannot be totally ruled out` that such instruments are useful in a uranium enrichment plant. He said that in the future he will `keep an eye on the aspect of possible use.`
He did so. Meanwhile, the Cologne public prosecution is investigating Lerch, because he allegedly smuggled cases of blueprints for the building of a uranium centrifuge out of the Federal Republic. At the same time, he had a number of special instruments copied in Switzerland, the investigators say. The individual parts, which were declared `cooper pipes, boilers, and crane girders,` were transported across the French border by truck and were shipped in Air France planes from Lyon via Dubai to Pakistan.
The deal attracted attention after Swiss customs officers seized three specially large vacuum containers, so-called autoclaves.
The proceedings against Lerch have been dragging on for 2 years now. Only one West German exporter has been punished because of illegal nuclear exports to Pakistan: Albrecht Migule.
Quoting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the judges said at the time that `owing to a law enforcement deficit, the FRG must accept being accused of having failed to meet its contractual obligations.` They added that `the goals` of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty have been `attacked,` because the authorities made it so easy for Migule that he did not have to proceed `particularly cleverly.`
SPD Bundestag Deputy Hermann Bachmaier says that `the motto by which people in the Federal Economics Ministry work appears like a red thread in the files: You never hear anything, you never see anything--and in particular, you never block anything.` Bachmaier, who heads the Bonn Nuclear Investigation Commission, says: `Our doors are just open.`
The Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center (KFK), which is 90 percent government-owned, also was involved in unrestrained exports. The KFK scientists supplied to their colleagues in Rawalpindi parts of a mass spectrometer, without which it is impossible to determine the degree of uranium enrichment. They trained Pakistani scientists, and even allowed one of them to visit their sanctary--the `hot cells` where plutonium is separated, and they passed on valuable know-how.
Even the Economics Ministry found the close contacts between Karlsruhe and the Pinstech laboratories `astounding.` The ministry said that whereas `constant efforts are being made to inhibit the Pakistani nuclear program,` the KFK `maintains very close contacts with relevant Pakistani authorities to convey know-how for just this nuclear program.` No conclusions were drawn.
The same thing happened when roughly 100 kg of specially hardened steel was shipped from Bremerhaven to Karachi on 9 August 1985. The hot goods on board the `Nedloyd Everest` were just being shipped across the Red Sea, when it dawned on the German authorities that it might perhaps be the so-called maraging steel of Arbed Saarstahl, which is subject to approval and is indispensable for the inside casing of uranium centrifuges, the rotors. The investigators later wondered why `so much fuss` was made about the shipment which involves a number of minor order addresses; however, the proceedings were discontinued.
No matter whether computer systems where involved that can be used for the `control of weapons systems,` highly sensitive electronic hardware or ring magnets which according to reports of the Federal Intelligence Service just corresponded to the dimensions of the Pakistani high-speed gas centrifuge of the second type (German version). A coincidence? The officials in the Bonn Economics Ministry always felt pestered, instead of feeling challenged to intensify their checks, when the Foreign Ministry passed on secret documents of U.S. intelligence services warning about planned deliveries.
Such `anonymous papers usually end up in my wastebasket,` Buenter Welzien of the Federal Economics Institute furiously wrote to the Economics Ministry, wondering whether Bonn had `ever bombarded the Department of Commerce in a similar way?` Even when the Americans asked Bonn to find out about negotiations conducted by German firms on the possible sale of so-called cryotons--tiny electronic elements with which the time a bomb detonates can be determined with an accuracy of one-millionth of a second--the Federal Economics Ministry`s reaction was particularly rough. A responsible official called Spies scribbled on a piece of paper: `I reject such employment measures on principle.`
However, the request had not been that absurd, after all. Rudolf Maximilian Ortmayer, at the time NTG manager, reportedly also negotiated in Pakistan with a man called Sulfikar Ahmed Butt--the very Pakistani who had attracted attention in the United States when he was trying, via agents, to purchase 50 cryotrons from EG & G Inc. Wellesley, Massachusetts, the only producer in the world. Butt, who is considered to be the chief buyer for the Pakistani bomb builders, reportedly presented to Ortmayer a comprehensive wish-list.
However, the negotiations were only more specific regarding tritium: Butt ordered 10 grams.
The nuclear buyer soon was not interested any more in the heavy water clearing plant that the Pakistanis initially planned to buy, although Ortmayer had engineered everything so nicely to legalize the deal. He invited the responsible official of the Federal Economics Institute, Manfred Ruck, and the Bonn expert spies to see him in Gelnhausen. Having a glass of sherry, the gentlemen discussed the export wishes.
Ruck wrote to his colleague Spies that the plant is absolutely harmless, comparable, `in a figurative sense, to a drinking water treatment plant.`
The application was approved.
Abdul Qadir khan stole nuclear technology
[FROM DER SPIEGEL, FEB. 20, 1989]
West German firms supplied parts and know-how.
The laboratory is hidden in a desert at the foot of the Kashmir mountains. Anti-aircraft artillery protects the area, soldiers guard the doorways into and out of the laboratories, storehouses, and underground vaults.
In the laboratory, generators whir, selected scientists operate highly sensitive aggregates; measuring instruments, vacuum pumps, and automated precision tools work around the clock.
In the nuclear plant, which forms part of the nuclear center of Pinstech near Rawalpindi, elements for the Islamic bomb are produced in strict secrecy--with machinery made in Germany.
The German equipment--for the time being the last delivery--was tested on site by Peter Finke, 45, on behalf of the Gelnhausen-based firm New Technologies (NTG). In July last year, the physicist showed his Pakistani colleagues for 2 weeks how to operate the complicated glove-compartment plant for the recovery of tritium.
Since then the scientist (`I am a pacifist`) has had pangs of consicence; possibly the equipment could be `converted,` he says. He stresses that anyway, a `pure training plant` was supplied--allegedly, in order to clean the tritium-contaminated Pakistani nuclear reactor in Karachi, which is, however, 1,100 km away.
Radioactive tritium is sold on the international black market of weapons-grade nuclear products at even higher prices than plutonium. A few grams of this gas are sufficient to increase the power of an explosive `substantially,` says nuclear weapons scientist Gerhard Locke, 56, of the Euskirchen Fraunhofer Institute. Therefore, `the second bomb generation of the lighter type` cannot do `without tritium,` he says.
However, the artificially produced superheavy hydrogen decomposes quickly into helium. Therefore, it must be constantly renewed.
That is precisely what the NTG plant can do: Every day, five grams of tritium can be recovered--a quantity which according to Locke is `incredibly large.` That is why Albert Farwick, chief of the Nanau public prosecution which is investigating NTG, considers `some civil use practically inconceivable.`
There is no doubt that Munir Ahmed Khan, chief of the Pakistan Nuclear Authority, with whom Finke already had a cup of tea, has secretly developed his country into a nuclear power; the bomb puzzle is complete. He had many individual parts--ranging from transformer sheets to uranium conversion--supplied by small West German firms, using a network of agents to this end.
The special pipes and supersolid steel from Singen and Saarbruecken, the mass spectrometers and magnets from Bremen and Bonn were made-to-measure for Khan`s program which is carried out in a number of nuclear centers:
In Rawalpindi, where in addition to the bomb plant, a 24-year-old U.S. research reactor is in operation and a reprocessing plant produces about 20 kg of plutonium every year;
In Kahuta, Abdil-Kadir Khan, who is admired as `the new Einstein,` meanwhile has produced more than 100 kg highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, using ultra-highspeed centrifuges;
At the Dera-Ghazi-Khan center, natural uranium is pulverized and converted into uranium hexafluoride, the initial product for further processing, in three conversion plants supplied by the Freiburg businessman Albrecht Migule for DM15 million.
The Pakistani `atom shopping` has often had Bonn`s official approval. The Federal Economics Office (BAW) in Eschborn approved the export of an electronically controlled miling machine of the Munich-based Friedrich Deckel AG, which a secret U.S. study assesses as `extremely useful` for the `production of elements of a nuclear explosive system;` the Economics Ministry rejected as `unacceptable and irrelevant` the U.S. demand to guarantee that the machine not be used in the nuclear industry.
The export of a special press to compact hard-metal powder, which was supplied by Dieffenbacher GmbH & Co in the Swabian town of Eppingen in 1985, was also approved, even though the purpose of the machine (price DM1.3 million) was not kept secret. The responsible officials knew that the isostatic hot press was intended `for use in an ammunition factory for the manufacture of heavy-metal cores for projectiles.`
What types of cores could be meant was discovered post facto by experts of the Federal Research Ministry: `A highly efficient nuclear explosive` must be compressed to the largest possible extent, and `the easiest way` to achieve this is by using a press that is hardly different from the Dieffenbacher model.
The press and the milling machine, made in Germany, were so-called dual-use goods that can also be used for peaceful purposes and are therefore not contained in the embargo lists. However, the U.S. Administration had warned Bonn in time about such deals. U.S. intelligence services reported in 1979 that with the blueprints that he stole in Almelo, in the Netherlands, Abdil Khan was now in a position to build a uranium enrichment plant. To this end, he would buy `equipment on the European market,` they said.
U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt at the time that `we must be careful and prevent this program from beng completed.` U.S. experts specifically went to Bonn to instruct the responsible officials. They told them that two firms, the Hanau-based Leybold-Heraeus and the Renningen-based Team Industries, were already `doing business.`
Several weeks later, two managers of the enterprises mentioned informed the Economics Ministry that the deals had been carried out. Team Industries had just shipped 31 frequency converters to Pakistan, highly sensitive instruments that are used for the power supply of uranium centrifuges. Leydold-Heraeus manager Gotthard Lerch reported that his firm had supplied valves, vacuum pumps, brazing furnaces, measuring instruments, and a gas purifying plant `in the past 3 years`--together `worth DM1.3 million.`
Lerch also said that of course, `it cannot be totally ruled out` that such instruments are useful in a uranium enrichment plant. He said that in the future he will `keep an eye on the aspect of possible use.`
He did so. Meanwhile, the Cologne public prosecution is investigating Lerch, because he allegedly smuggled cases of blueprints for the building of a uranium centrifuge out of the Federal Republic. At the same time, he had a number of special instruments copied in Switzerland, the investigators say. The individual parts, which were declared `cooper pipes, boilers, and crane girders,` were transported across the French border by truck and were shipped in Air France planes from Lyon via Dubai to Pakistan.
The deal attracted attention after Swiss customs officers seized three specially large vacuum containers, so-called autoclaves.
The proceedings against Lerch have been dragging on for 2 years now. Only one West German exporter has been punished because of illegal nuclear exports to Pakistan: Albrecht Migule.
Quoting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the judges said at the time that `owing to a law enforcement deficit, the FRG must accept being accused of having failed to meet its contractual obligations.` They added that `the goals` of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty have been `attacked,` because the authorities made it so easy for Migule that he did not have to proceed `particularly cleverly.`
SPD Bundestag Deputy Hermann Bachmaier says that `the motto by which people in the Federal Economics Ministry work appears like a red thread in the files: You never hear anything, you never see anything--and in particular, you never block anything.` Bachmaier, who heads the Bonn Nuclear Investigation Commission, says: `Our doors are just open.`
The Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center (KFK), which is 90 percent government-owned, also was involved in unrestrained exports. The KFK scientists supplied to their colleagues in Rawalpindi parts of a mass spectrometer, without which it is impossible to determine the degree of uranium enrichment. They trained Pakistani scientists, and even allowed one of them to visit their sanctary--the `hot cells` where plutonium is separated, and they passed on valuable know-how.
Even the Economics Ministry found the close contacts between Karlsruhe and the Pinstech laboratories `astounding.` The ministry said that whereas `constant efforts are being made to inhibit the Pakistani nuclear program,` the KFK `maintains very close contacts with relevant Pakistani authorities to convey know-how for just this nuclear program.` No conclusions were drawn.
The same thing happened when roughly 100 kg of specially hardened steel was shipped from Bremerhaven to Karachi on 9 August 1985. The hot goods on board the `Nedloyd Everest` were just being shipped across the Red Sea, when it dawned on the German authorities that it might perhaps be the so-called maraging steel of Arbed Saarstahl, which is subject to approval and is indispensable for the inside casing of uranium centrifuges, the rotors. The investigators later wondered why `so much fuss` was made about the shipment which involves a number of minor order addresses; however, the proceedings were discontinued.
No matter whether computer systems where involved that can be used for the `control of weapons systems,` highly sensitive electronic hardware or ring magnets which according to reports of the Federal Intelligence Service just corresponded to the dimensions of the Pakistani high-speed gas centrifuge of the second type (German version). A coincidence? The officials in the Bonn Economics Ministry always felt pestered, instead of feeling challenged to intensify their checks, when the Foreign Ministry passed on secret documents of U.S. intelligence services warning about planned deliveries.
Such `anonymous papers usually end up in my wastebasket,` Buenter Welzien of the Federal Economics Institute furiously wrote to the Economics Ministry, wondering whether Bonn had `ever bombarded the Department of Commerce in a similar way?` Even when the Americans asked Bonn to find out about negotiations conducted by German firms on the possible sale of so-called cryotons--tiny electronic elements with which the time a bomb detonates can be determined with an accuracy of one-millionth of a second--the Federal Economics Ministry`s reaction was particularly rough. A responsible official called Spies scribbled on a piece of paper: `I reject such employment measures on principle.`
However, the request had not been that absurd, after all. Rudolf Maximilian Ortmayer, at the time NTG manager, reportedly also negotiated in Pakistan with a man called Sulfikar Ahmed Butt--the very Pakistani who had attracted attention in the United States when he was trying, via agents, to purchase 50 cryotrons from EG & G Inc. Wellesley, Massachusetts, the only producer in the world. Butt, who is considered to be the chief buyer for the Pakistani bomb builders, reportedly presented to Ortmayer a comprehensive wish-list.
However, the negotiations were only more specific regarding tritium: Butt ordered 10 grams.
The nuclear buyer soon was not interested any more in the heavy water clearing plant that the Pakistanis initially planned to buy, although Ortmayer had engineered everything so nicely to legalize the deal. He invited the responsible official of the Federal Economics Institute, Manfred Ruck, and the Bonn expert spies to see him in Gelnhausen. Having a glass of sherry, the gentlemen discussed the export wishes.
Ruck wrote to his colleague Spies that the plant is absolutely harmless, comparable, `in a figurative sense, to a drinking water treatment plant.`
The application was approved.
#110 Posted by arjun_m on October 28, 2002 8:08:11 am
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#109 Posted by Urstruly on October 28, 2002 8:08:10 am
Arjunm,
The details of the court case proceedings against Mr. Khan are mentioned in detail in S.M. Zafar`s book ``mere mash-hoor muqaddame`` (My famous court cases). Mr. Zafar has been one of the top most constitutional and criminal case lawyers in Pakistan; in Ayub government he was minister of Law; and he was the chief defence lawyer in Dutch court alongwith a team of dutch, british, and pakistani lawyers. At the end of his book he has also printed some of the transcripts pertaining to the case in question. An on line version of the book is not available.
You are the expert on on line searches, I am pretty sure you will find something on this case eventually. The link that you have provided does not address the point in question. I never questioned whether Pakistan provided technology to Korea or not.
#108 Posted by arjun_m on October 28, 2002 7:27:53 am
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#107 Posted by RLeonard on October 28, 2002 7:27:53 am
AAmir
Without interrupting your conversation with URst or Arjun,
1) Homiyar Bhabha was a Zoroastrian - descendant of the kind that escaped Persia from invading Arab hordes
2) Believe it or not - many European publications have openly accused Qadeer Khan of stealing papers from Euro labs in a not so discreet manner - I leave it at that
Without interrupting your conversation with URst or Arjun,
1) Homiyar Bhabha was a Zoroastrian - descendant of the kind that escaped Persia from invading Arab hordes
2) Believe it or not - many European publications have openly accused Qadeer Khan of stealing papers from Euro labs in a not so discreet manner - I leave it at that
#106 Posted by RLeonard on October 28, 2002 7:27:53 am
Zafar
By flavoring potato chips in sambar you wold probably target only the high-born Brahmins who are not Dravids, if you need to target the Dravid sgement you would have to package it as `` Sweet Tamil Renaissance`` potato chips - demographics of TN suggest that this would be prudent because Brahmins make up about 2 % of TN.
By flavoring potato chips in sambar you wold probably target only the high-born Brahmins who are not Dravids, if you need to target the Dravid sgement you would have to package it as `` Sweet Tamil Renaissance`` potato chips - demographics of TN suggest that this would be prudent because Brahmins make up about 2 % of TN.
#105 Posted by arjun_m on October 28, 2002 7:27:53 am
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#104 Posted by Urstruly on October 28, 2002 6:32:14 am
Shankar 101
I did not understand a word you have written. I think technical subjects must be addressed objectively regradless of who says what; and besides you are laughing by typing your laugh. Are you OK?
Arjunm #98
That is not what your ilk was saying a week ago but that is ok. Are you sure this time you are gonna stick with this stance?
Besides, I do not understand if, as you say, Paksitan already had technology from Holland then why get it from China; just to incease costs? and if Paksitan got it from China then it must have not ``stolen`` from Holland. And keep it in mind that a high level court of law has exhonorated Dr. Khan from any wrongdoing. I dont think there is a law in any part of world yet that prohibits someone carrying his knowledge in his head.
#103 Posted by AAmir on October 27, 2002 9:29:49 pm
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