- * Times reporter finds blueprint for 'Nagasaki bomb'
- * Singed files left by fleeing terrorists
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- Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network held detailed plans
for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs in one of its Kabul headquarters.
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- The Times discovered the partly burnt documents in a
hastily abandoned safe house in the Karta Parwan quarter of the city. Written
in Arabic, German, Urdu and English, the notes give detailed designs for
missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the
detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a
chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction.
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- Both President Bush and British ministers are convinced
that bin Laden has access to nuclear material and Mr Bush said earlier
this month that al-Qaeda was "seeking chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons".
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- The discovery of the detailed bomb-making instructions,
along with studies into chemical and nuclear devices, confirms the West's
worst fears and raises the spectre of plans for an attack that would far
exceed the September 11 atrocities in scale and gravity.
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- Nuclear experts say the design suggests that bin Laden
may be working on a fission device, similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped
on Nagasaki. However, they emphasised that it was extremely difficult to
build a viable warhead.
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- While the terrorists may not yet have the capability
to build such weapons, their hopes of doing so are clear. One set of notes,
written on headed notepaper from the Hotel Grand in Peshawar and dated
April 26, 1998, says: "Naturally the explosive liquid has a very high
mechanical energy which is translated into destructive force. But it can
be tamed, controlled and can be used as a useful propulsive fuel if certain
methods are applied to it. A supersonic moving missile has a shock wave.
That shock wave can be used to contain an external combustion behind the
missile . . ."
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- The document was one of many found in two of four al-Qaeda
houses which had been used by Arabs and Pakistanis and even reportedly
by bin Laden himself. The houses - two in the Karta Parwan district and
the others further to the east - were abandoned on Monday as Taleban units
and their allies fled the city.
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- Attempts had been made to burn the evidence, but many
documents still remained. They included studies into the development of
a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads,
external propulsion missiles, preliminary research on the creation of a
thermonuclear device, as well as a multitude of instructions for making
smaller bombs.
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- There were also studies into Western special forces'
hostage rescue techniques, phone numbers for industrial chemical and synthetic
producers, flight manuals, aerodynamic research, and advanced physics and
chemistry manuals.
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- The houses were identified by local people. Looters had
concentrated on more appetising objects, ignoring foreign language documents
that were of no use to them.
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- Bin Laden sees it as his "religious duty" to
obtain a nuclear bomb. In an interview with a Pakistani journalist last
week, he threatened: "If America used chemical or nuclear weapons
against us then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons as deterrent."
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- Intelligence agencies already have indirect evidence
from defectors, middlemen and scientists of bin Laden's obsession with
obtaining or producing a nuclear device.
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- Al-Qaeda agents are known to have spent more than £1
million trying to obtain enough fissile material to make a "dirty
bomb" that, if detonated with TNT in a populous area, could kill thousands
and contaminate it for decades.
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- Intelligence sources told The Times last month that bin
Laden and al-Qaeda had acquired nuclear materials illegally from Pakistan.
And at least ten Pakistani nuclear scientists have been contacted by agents
for the Taleban and al-Qaeda in the past two years, according to reports.
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- Fears that bin Laden has components for a nuclear weapon
is believed to lie behind the warnings from President Bush and Tony Blair
that he would commit worse atrocities than the suicide assaults in America
if he could.The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "Bin Laden would
have killed 600,000 people on September 11 if he could have done. This
underlines again why he has to be stopped. "
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