The New York Times is reporting that U.S. scientists now believe that North Korea was the source of enriched uranium recovered from Libya, a state long suspected of links to numerous terrorist groups:
Scientific tests have led American intelligence agencies and government scientists to conclude with near certainty that North Korea sold processed uranium to Libya, bolstering earlier indications that the reclusive state exported sensitive fuel for atomic weapons, according to officials with access to the intelligence. The determination, which has circulated among senior government officials in recent weeks, has touched off a hunt to determine if North Korea has also sold uranium to other countries, including Iran and Syria.
The sales would have pre-dated Libya’s December 2003 agreement to sever its links to terrorism and abandon its WMD development programs. The report closely follows a sudden and unexplained recall of the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea from Seoul to Washington for consultations with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Meanwhile, top officials of the National Security Council have flown to Asia to brief U.S. allies in the region.
The new findings appear to confirm earlier reports of North Korean nuclear transfers to Libya. Information from Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan’s exposed nuclear network also suggests that North Korea had a highly enriched uranium program since at least 1997, and that it had since sold Pakistan an unknown amount of highly enriched uranium hexafluoride.
President Bush is expected to discuss North Korea during tonight’s State of the Union address. The latest report may add urgency to the administration’s search for a solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. The administration’s publicly stated policy is to pursue six-nation disarmament talks, but diplomacy has produced no significant progress thus far, and North Korea has refused to participate in the talks since June 2004. Others, reportedly including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are believed to hold little hope that talks with resolve the crisis and privately favor regime change through a combination of economic pressure and political subversion. A new law, the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, appropriates $2 million for “such actions as may be necessary to increase the availability . . . of sources of information not controlled by the Government of North Korea, including . . . radios capable of receiving broadcasts from outside of North Korea.” Congress is working with other government agencies on ways to carry out this provision.
A 1994 disarmament agreement with North Korea collapsed after the United States accused North Korea of violating the agreement, known as the Agreed Framework. The Clinton Administration, which signed the agreement with North Korea, had also suspected North Korea of violating it since at least 1999. In 2001, the new Bush Administration ordered a policy review, concluded that North Korea had violated the agreement, and halted deliveries of fuel oil to North Korea. North Korea then expelled all IAEA inspectors and unilaterally withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). U.S. negotiators say that their North Korean counterparts later admitted that Pyongyang had an undeclared uranium enrichment program, which would violate the North’s NPT obligations—obligations it had reaffirmed in the 1994 agreement. Pyongyang has since denied making the admission.
The latest report conflicts with the beliefs of some North Korea experts that North Korea is unlikely to supply nuclear materials to terrorists or their sponsors. Former Clinton (and later, Bush) administration negotiator Jack Pritchard, who strongly favors offering Pyongyang expanded trade and diplomatic relations in exchange for North Korea’s agreement to halt its nuclear programs, recently told Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun that a North Korean sale of nuclear material to terrorists would cross a “red line” for the Bush Administration. Another strong Bush Administration critic, Selig Harrison, has questioned the administration’s evidence of a North Korean uranium enrichment program and downplayed fears that North Korean transfers of nuclear material pose a proliferation risk: “The North Koreans said they would never allow such a transfer to al-Qaida or anyone else.”
In December 2003, Libya agreed to turn its nuclear materials over to the United States, which maintains them at a Department of Energy facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That agreement closely followed an interception of Libyan-bound centrifuge parts by member states of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led coalition created to combat WMD proliferation. It also followed Libya’s 2002 acceptance of responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and its agreement to compensate the families of those killed in the attack.
Before the December 2003 agreement, and at the time North Korea allegedly sold the materials to Libya, Colonel Moammar Khadaffy’s regime was considered a generous state sponsor of terrorism. According to this Heritage Foundation report:
Libya is one of seven regimes listed by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism. The country has a long history of support for terrorist groups in the Middle East and more than thirty terrorist groups worldwide. Libya provided arms, funding, and training for a wide variety of Palestinian terrorist groups (Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and the Abu Nidal group), as well as the Kurdistan Workers Party, the Colombian terrorist group M19, the Red Brigades in Italy, and assorted other terrorist groups in Japan, Turkey, Northern Ireland, Thailand and elsewhere.Libya was caught red-handed sponsoring a terrorist attack against Americans in 1986, when it bombed a German discotheque frequented by American servicemen, killing two Americans. The Reagan Administration retaliated by bombing Libyan targets on April 15, 1986, narrowly missing Qadhafi himself. Although Libya has not been caught red-handed in launching terrorist attacks in recent years, it has not closed down all of its terrorist training camps and could resume its terrorist activities as soon as it finds it convenient to do so.
In addition to its involvement in the Lockerbie bombing, Libya is also responsible for the 1989 bombing of a French passenger jet in Niger, which killed 170 people. A French court convicted in absentia six Libyans, including the brother in law of Colonel Qadhafi, for carrying out the bombing. Libya offered to pay a paltry $33 million in compensation to the families.
Of more recent and greater concern is Libya’s recent $12 million payment to the Filipino terror group abu-Sayyaf, described by Libya as a “ransom” payment for several foreign hostages. Abu Sayyaf is closely tied to al-Qaeda, although it has since been virtually destroyed by the Filipino Army, working with soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, operating from Torii Station, Okinawa, Japan.
UPDATE: The story went unmentioned in the SOTU. More updates, including IAEA skepticism and my own comments, here.
I reported on legislation being brought forward on Pervez Musharraf, allowing him to remain both as President and Army Chief in Pakistan back on October 14. Now it seems the legislation has been signed.
Pakistan’s Senate president signed legislation yesterday that will allow Gen. Pervez Musharraf to remain as both head of state and army chief beyond Dec. 31, a senior Cabinet minister said.Parliament passed the legislation earlier this month. It was signed into law by Mohammed Mian Soomro, who as chairman of the Senate is Pakistan’s acting president while Musharraf is on a visit to Latin America, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said by telephone from London.
There was no doubt that the legislation would be signed, but the timing was unusual and appeared to indicate that Musharraf did not want to put his name on it.
The general has been under fire for reneging on promises to restore full democracy, though both Washington and the Commonwealth of former British colonies have indicated a willingness to go along with his move in the interest of stability in a key ally in the war on terror.
Tipped by: Jane at Armies of Liberation
Originally posted at Diggers Realm
Winds of Change.NET Regional Briefings run on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, and sometimes Fridays too. This Regional Briefing focuses on South Asia, courtesy of Robi Sen and Nitin Pai of The Acorn
PAKISTANS TRUMP CARD
Other Topics Today Include: Pakistan; Teflon-Mushie navigates through a perfect storm; South Asia grapples with Iraq hostage crisis; A suicide bomber-in-waiting for the PM-in-waiting; Shifting Alliances; Nonproliferation; Deluge and Drought; Wahhabi extremism visits Cambodia; Talking about the subcontinent’s border disputes.
REUTERS: Pakistan’s PM-Designate Survives Assassination Bid
Pakistan’s prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz survived an assassination attempt Friday while campaigning in a by-election, witnesses and officials said.Aziz, currently finance minister, was coming out of a campaign meeting when a bomb went off, witnesses said.
“As he (Aziz) came out of a public meeting, there was a blast. Many people have been wounded. Some also died. But with the grace of God he is safe and sound,” a reporter traveling with him said.
An aide of Aziz told Reuters from the scene that two people were killed, including an attacker. State-run Pakistan Television said eight people were wounded.
Mushahid Hussain, secretary general of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, said he spoke to Aziz by telephone shortly after the attack.
“He seemed to be quite okay. He was quite calm and composed,” Hussain said. “He said he was all right. He said there was an explosion close by his car.”
Libya is selling its old, French-made, fighter jets to Pakistan, which may imply that after years of sanctions crippling Libya’s military programs, the country might be looking to revamp parts of its forces.
According to South Africa’s Mail & Guardian:
Pakistan has turned to old ally Libya to purchase a fleet of Mirage fighter jets and spare parts, an air force spokesperson said on Monday.“Libya had a fleet of Mirages, which was grounded for over a decade. We have purchased that fleet at a very reasonable price,” Air Commodore Sarfraz Khan said.
“The deal has been finalised, the shipment has started.”
Khan would not reveal the price or the number of craft in the fleet, but press reports said the purchase included 50 jets and 150 engines.
All the jets will be scrapped for spare parts to maintain Pakistan’s existing fleet of Mirages.
[. . .]
The Libyan Air Force had been dormant for several years due to sanctions over its nuclear programme. The sanctions were lifted by the United States last year after Libya revealed the full extent of its nuclear programme to the United Nations atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. — Sapa-AFP
REUTERS: India, Pakistan to Set Up Nuclear Hotline
India and Pakistan renewed a ban on nuclear test blasts on Sunday and agreed to set up a hotline between their foreign ministries after unprecedented talks on reducing the risk of nuclear war on the subcontinent.During two days of meetings both sides — who came close to war over Kashmir two years ago — also agreed to work on formalizing arrangements to notify each other before missile tests.
Pakistani Foreign Ministry official Masood Khan, in New Delhi for the talks, said “significant progress” had been made.
“The spirit right now in the nuclear realm is to transcend beyond rhetoric and do something substantive and concrete,” he told reporters.