- SINGAPORE (Reuters) - North
Korea had the nearest thing to a nuclear delivery system suitable for Pakistan's
purposes. Pakistan had the bomb and the means to teach Pyongyang to make
its own.
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- The time was the mid-1990s, both states were beleaguered.
North Korea was isolated from the world of its own volition, by its dogged
adherence to the ideology of juche, or self-reliance, created by late Great
Leader Kim Il-sung.
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- Pakistan was a pariah, in trouble and slapped with sanctions
because everyone -- or at least the United States -- was pretty sure it
was clandestinely engaged in trying to obtain missile and fissile technology
from China.
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- In what has become a classic manoeuvre, the two outcasts
found a way into each other's arms and arsenals and created one of the
most frightening nuclear threats on earth, say Pakistani sources close
to the talks who declined to be identified.
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- Negotiations must have gone on for at least a decade
between the two militaries -- the Koreans eager to develop nuclear weapons,
the Pakistanis desperate for a strategic delivery system that would ensure
a potent deterrent to neighbouring India.
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- MILITARY MANOEUVRES
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- A heaven-sent opportunity presented itself in 1993 when
newly elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto decided her first foreign visit
should take her to close ally China. Oddly enough, she then made a two-day
side-trip to Pyongyang.
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- That visit seemed incongruous at the time. Bhutto said
her visit would focus on economic relations, including North Korean assistance
in building small hydroelectric dams in Pakistan.
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- In fact, the trip had other power systems in mind, said
one Pakistani source.
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- Bhutto had undertaken the tour at the behest of her military,
which wanted a chance to sit down with their North Korean counterparts
and hammer out details of a deal they had been negotiating for some time,
the source said.
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- "The military basically just told her what to do
and she went along," said the source. "That was the deal she
made with the army for winning office."
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- A spokesman for Benazir Bhutto in London could not be
reached for comment.
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- She was accompanied by Defence Minister Aftab Shabban
Mirani, but he played no key role, the source said. Taking a quiet back
seat in the delegation but running the show were Pakistan military officers,
if not also the powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency, the source
said.
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- Those two days of talks were a chance to start the laborious
business of reaching a deal to enable Pakistan to swap its uranium enrichment
technology for North Korea's Nodong ballistic missile.
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- The Nodong is not hugely sophisticated. It is believed
to be an enhanced version of the Soviet Scud B surface-to-surface missile
with a range of 1,000 km (600 miles) -- long enough to deliver a device
against South Korea, or India.
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- Uranium enrichment was perfect for North Korea. Using
gas centrifuge technology it could enrich uranium to weapons-grade status
and stash it underground. That was not the case with less versatile plutonium,
available at the Yongbyon plant but above ground and easily monitored by
space imaging.
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- No one is prepared to go on the record about just who
did what when.
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- RUMOURS, BUT WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE?
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- Reports go that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist
known as the father of Pakistan's bomb, has visited North Korea several
times, at least once in recent years.
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- In 1999, the Times of India reported a 1995 deal between
a North Korean firm, Changgwang Sinyong (CSC), and Khan Research Laboratories.
According to North Korea expert Aidan Foster-Carter, CSC is an arm of the
Fourth Machine Industry Bureau of Pyongyang's Second Economic Committee,
which means it is military.
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- Few doubt that Pakistan's Ghauri-III missile is essentially
a North Korean design, the British expert wrote last year.
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- Just last year, the commander of the North Korean air
force, Colonel-General O Kum-chol, paid a week-long visit to Pakistan,
Foster-Carter said. Local news sources were tight-lipped on the agenda,
most merely saying that the two sides "discussed matters of professional
interest".
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- This month Pakistan denied a report suggesting it had
given recent assistance to North Korea's nuclear programme.
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- The Washington Post said Washington had evidence suggesting
that Pakistan had assisted Pyongyang's nuclear efforts just a few months
ago -- much later than previously disclosed.
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- Whatever the timing, the issue faces the U.S. administration
with a difficult choice since, under U.S. law, the president must suspend
economic and military aid if a country transfers nuclear technology without
international safeguards.
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- Pakistan was sanctioned for such behaviour in the past
but penalties were waived after Washington's anti-terror war began in the
wake of the September 11 suicide attacks on U.S. cities.
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- Current military leader Pervez Musharraf may still be
flavour of the month in Washington for his aid in that war.
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- But more answers may be forthcoming from exiled Benazir
Bhutto who was in Pyongyang when the military seized the opportunity to
buttress their own defences with a deal that has since shocked the world.
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