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Benazir Oversaw N. Korea
Nuclear Deal - Sources

By Jane Macartney
Asian Diplomatic Correspondent
11-19-2

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
MILITARY MANOEUVRES
 
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.
 
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.
 
In fact, the trip had other power systems in mind, said one Pakistani source.
 
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.
 
"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."
 
A spokesman for Benazir Bhutto in London could not be reached for comment.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
No one is prepared to go on the record about just who did what when.
 
RUMOURS, BUT WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE?
 
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.
 
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.
 
Few doubt that Pakistan's Ghauri-III missile is essentially a North Korean design, the British expert wrote last year.
 
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".
 
This month Pakistan denied a report suggesting it had given recent assistance to North Korea's nuclear programme.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Current military leader Pervez Musharraf may still be flavour of the month in Washington for his aid in that war.
 
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.
 
 
Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited







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