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NYT report highlights Chinese contribution to Pakistani bomb

Smuggled Chinese technology and contradictory shifts in US policy have helped Pakistan build its nuclear bomb, says the New York Times, quoting present and former US officials.

China, a staunch ally of Pakistan, provided blueprints for the bomb, as well as highly enriched uranium, tritium, scientists and key components for a nuclear weapons production complex, among other crucial tools. Without China's help, Pakistan's bomb would not exist, said Gary Milhollin, a leading expert on the spread of nuclear weapons.

Beginning in 1990, Pakistan is believed to have built between seven and 12 nuclear warheads -- based on the Chinese design, assisted by Chinese scientists and Chinese technology, the daily adds.

That technology included Chinese magnets for producing weapons-grade enriched uranium, a furnace for shaping the uranium into a nuclear bomb core, and high-tech diagnostic equipment for nuclear weapons tests, according to the Monterey Institute of International Studies, which tracks the spread of nuclear weapons and technology.

The United States provided Pakistani nuclear scientists with technical training from the 1950s into the 1970s. And it turned a blind eye to the nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s, because Pakistan was providing the crucial link in the Central Intelligence Agency's effort to smuggle billions of dollars of weapons to Afghan guerrillas attempting to drive out Soviet invaders.

''We have helped create the conditions that exist today for the big bomb,'' said Milt Bearden, who was a senior CIA officer in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989. ''Our marvellous sanctions forced their hand-forced them to go where they are today.''

Nicholas Platt, who was the US ambassador to Pakistan in 1991-92 and now serves as president of the Asia Society, said, ''Our own policy, which denied them a credible conventional capability, has in a way forced them to rely more on the nuclear deterrent.''

Pakistan's efforts to build the bomb began in the 1950s. Under the ''atoms for peace'' programme, the United States agreed to train Pakistani scientists in nuclear-reactor technology. Washington also provided Pakistan's first research reactor and fuel. The training continued until 1972.

India tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, and Pakistan greatly intensified its efforts in response. The programme was closely monitored by the US military, intelligence and law-enforcement services -- so closely that the then president Jimmy Carter cut off all military and economic aid to Pakistan in April 1979, citing US laws aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

That decision was reversed nine months later, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, which lies on Pakistan's border.

Pakistan's military ruler, General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, agreed to smuggle weapons to the Afghans on behalf of the CIA. Suddenly Pakistan was the recipient of a six-year, $ 3.2 billion American aid package -- half cash, half high-tech weapons.

The daily quotes a secret State Department report saying that there was ''unambiguous evidence'' that Pakistan is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons programme. It detailed how Pakistan had bought or stolen nuclear weapons technology around the world.

The report, based on information gathered by the CIA and recently declassified, also said flatly that ''China has provided assistance to Pakistan's programme to develop a nuclear weapons capability.''

The ''unambiguous evidence'' included Pakistan's secret blueprint for a nuclear bomb. That blueprint was made in China.

Pakistan had obtained the plans from the Chinese government in the early 1980s. The bomb was simple and efficient, based on highly enriched uranium, and it had been tested by the Chinese in 1966. US government physicists built a model of the bomb and reported that it was a virtually foolproof design. ''The United States approached the Pakistani government at the highest levels to communicate its extreme concern'' over the nuclear-weapons programme, the report said.

Bearden, the former CIA officer stationed in Pakistan, recalled, ''We went to them and said, 'Here is what your bomb looks like' -- even showed them a model, I believe.''

But indicated his belief that he had the blessings of then president Ronald Reagan and then CIA director William Casey to go ahead and build the bomb, according to two retired Pakistani military officials. The general clearly stated his intent in a 1986 interview. ''It is our right to obtain the technology,'' Zia said.

In 1985, Congress enacted a law requiring the president to certify that Pakistan was not building nuclear weapons and thus eligible for continuing military and economic aid. And every year from 1985 to 1990, Reagan and George Bush certified just that.

"Reagan and Bush said it ain't a bomb until they turn that last screw and paint b-o-m-b on the side,'' Bearden said.

Everything changed after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, when Pakistan was no longer needed as the key link in the CIA's arms pipeline to Afghan rebels. In 1990, the United States finally acknowledged that the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme existed -- and, under the law, cut off military aid.

UNI

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