A
A.Rahman
GUEST
Who Has the Bomb
The threat is spreading, and the phantom proliferators lead the way
Jun. 3, 1985
It is called a research center, but the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Research looks more like a fortress. Layers of barbed wire surround the sprawling complex in the dusty hills at Kahuta, 20 miles southeast of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Much of the facility is buried beneath the earth, a precaution against accident -- or perhaps surprise attack. Paratroopers guard the installation, and tanks block all routes into Kahuta. Crotale surface-to- air missiles and antiaircraft guns bristle toward the skies, through which Pakistani air force planes fly round-the-clock patrols. Unauthorized entry to Kahuta is impossible, sightseeing in the vicinity ill advised.
Precise information about what goes on inside Kahuta is virtually unobtainable; the site is one of Pakistan's most closely held defense secrets. Nonetheless, over the past decade the world has been catching occasional, disturbing glimpses of clandestine dealings and espionage coups that have left trails of suspicion leading inexorably back to Kahuta. All those James Bond operations have conveyed the same unsettling message: even though the government of President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq firmly denies it, Pakistan appears to be developing the capacity to build an atom bomb.
But Kahuta is just one outcropping of a far bigger nightmare: nuclear proliferation, the spread of atomic weaponry, has entered a new and ever more ominous phase. As the 40th anniversary of the A-bomb explosion over Hiroshima approaches, the world has special reason to view what is happening with trepidation, at the very least. On the Asian subcontinent, in the Middle East, in southern Africa and, to a lesser degree, in South America, a number of countries have acquired or are in the process of acquiring the capacity to build atomic weapons. At the same time, the fragile international system of self-restraint that the world has built around its most deadly Pandora's box of technology, a system that has worked surprisingly well so far, is under growing strain. Says a senior official of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency: "Proliferation has already happened. The main problem of the late 1980s is not so much preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, but making it survivable."
. Among the signs that illustrate proliferation's disquieting reach:
-- In Moscow on an official visit last week, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi charged that Pakistan's development of an atom bomb was "very close" to fruition. Earlier this month, the Indian leader had affirmed that such an achievement by his country's chief regional rival "will completely change the present military balance on the subcontinent. At no cost will we allow our integrity and security to be compromised." In 1974, India shocked the world with a "peaceful" underground nuclear explosion in the Rajasthan Des- ert; Gandhi's pronouncements hold out the threat that India might resume testing, perhaps even begin to build and stockpile nuclear arms.
-- In Los Angeles, a federal grand jury has indicted a U.S. citizen for exporting to Israel 810 high-speed precision switches known as Krytrons, in contravention of U.S. export laws. It is an open secret that Israel has its own atomic weapons program; Krytrons can be used as part of the trigger mechanism for nuclear arms. But Israel offered to return many of the switches, and the U.S. State Department accepted Jerusalem's explanation that it did not intend to use the devices in its atomic weapons program. Still, the incident demonstrates the ease with which highly sensitive technology necessary for nuclear-arms manufacture can, and does, escape control.
-- In Washington next month, two House Foreign Affairs subcommittees will hold joint hearings on the global spread of plutonium, the highly toxic atomic explosive. An estimated 55 tons of separated plutonium exists in the West, a stockpile that is growing by five to six tons a year. Among the issues likely to be discussed by legislators at the hearings is the potential that plutonium traffic offers to nuclear terrorism.
-- In Geneva in September, delegates from about 85 countries will meet to review progress under the 1968 United Nations-sponsored Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The treaty is the most important accomplishment of the worldwide antiproliferation effort, but it expires in 1995 and there is no guarantee that it will be renewed. The atmosphere at the review session could be tense. Third World countries are expected to criticize the superpowers for failing to work toward nuclear disarmament, a promise embedded in the treaty. To some of the more militant Third World countries, that failure smacks of hypocrisy. The biggest fear is that one of the restive nations might withdraw from the treaty at the September session; if that happened, it would mean a calamitous setback, the first explicit unraveling of the world's major nonproliferation accord.
-- In Washington and elsewhere, nonproliferation experts are concerned over an erosion of confidence in the inspection apparatus of the International Atomic Energy Agency; the system is designed to monitor adherence to nonproliferation standards. The concern focuses on the "safeguards" sponsored by the I.A.E.A. to detect the diversion of peaceful atomic technology to bomb-making purposes. Some experts fear that the safeguard scheme is inadequate to the task at hand, while others are worried that the lack of confidence can itself lead to further weakening of an inspection system that in large measure functions on a basis of trust.
Proliferation invokes atavistic fears and uncertainties because it involves arcane and highly sophisticated technologies: breeder reactors, plutonium reprocessing plants, uranium-enrichment facilities.* Says Leonard Weiss, an expert on the U.S. Senate staff: "Proliferation is a set of symptoms with a number of causes. It is both a political and technical problem. Therefore no single cure, or set of cures, will work."
What experts agree on is the problem's perniciousness. "I used to think that
U.S.-Soviet arms control was the Everest of earthly problems," says Roger Molander, a nuclear expert formerly with the U.S. National Security Council, who now heads the Washington-based Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies. "But that was before I understood nuclear proliferation. It makes the superpower arms race look like a comparatively minor league problem." Says Charles Ebinger of Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies: "It's probably the most pessimistic issue I've ever dealt with. Nobody seems to come up with any solutions, myself included."
The spread of nuclear technology over the past four decades is both an impressive and a daunting achievement. Five countries formally possess nuclear weapons (the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China); India's 1974 test explosion shows that it has at least mastered the capacity to build them. All told, about 345 commercial nuclear power reactors are in operation in 26 countries, and some 52 nations have nuclear research facilities. At least eleven nations possess facilities for the reprocessing of nuclear fuels, all yielding varying amounts of plutonium. Large enrichment facilities to turn uranium into nuclear fuel, or bomb-grade material, exist in the U.S., the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, France and China. Commercial reprocessing plants to extract plutonium from used reactor fuel are located or planned in France, Britain, West Germany, Japan, India and the Soviet Union. Programs involving breeder reactors are under way in the Soviet Union, India, France, West Germany and Japan. (In 1983, the U.S. canceled its $4 billion Clinch River breeder facility, located at Oak Ridge, Tenn., because of long construction delays, steep cost increases and a declining need for additional nuclear power installations.)
The rate of proliferation could grow rapidly worse. Small, easily concealed new technologies for producing nuclear explosives are becoming available in world markets. Among them: high-speed centrifuges and still experimental laser systems for enriched-uranium production. Such systems could be engineered to produce the explosives needed to build the Bomb. Says Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington-based think tank: "History demonstrates that in the nuclear field, any technology ultimately is exported -- and Third World countries will get it."
Despite the overall pessimism that the proliferation issue inspires, there are some grounds for guarded hope. Since World War II, no atomic weapon has been used in warfare; nor have nations rushed to develop nuclear weapons in the numbers that were predicted even 20 years ago. In the early 1960s, it was feared that within a decade ten or more countries might have produced atomic arsenals. In the eleven years since India's nuclear test, no additional country, as far as can be confirmed, has succeeded in following suit.
That record, says Richard T. Kennedy, the Reagan Administration's ambassador- at-large for nonproliferation issues, provides grounds for both "cautious optimism and vigilance." Says he: "The situation ought not to give us a sense of great comfort for the future. But thus far (the nonproliferation system) has worked pretty well. Extraordinary vigilance and extraordinary effort just might give us another 20 years of the same."
Kennedy hastens to add that "there are countries that have gone forward in ways that we don't like. We're very concerned." Indeed, a new generation of nuclear powers, and would-be powers, is maturing. Known among experts as the "phantom proliferators," these countries are contributing the most significant uncertainties about the future of nonproliferation. The phantoms are India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and, to a lesser degree, Argentina and Brazil.
All of them have mastered, or are well on their way to mastering, the skills to produce atomic explosives. Unlike such nations as West Germany and Japan, which have also conquered the technology, the phantoms have declined to forswear the right to build atomic weapons by signing the nonproliferation treaty. As a result, some of their most sensitive nuclear activities are taking place outside the scope of International Atomic Energy Agency inspection.
Some of the phantoms are widely assumed to have atom bombs already or to be close to that goal. The major example of that ambiguous status known as having "a bomb in the basement" is Israel. The Israelis probably developed an atomic weapon as early as 1968, in all likelihood using reprocessed plutonium from their top-secret, French-built research reactor at Dimona, in the Negev desert. By 1973, Israel was believed to possess at least 13 nuclear weapons.
This month the well-regarded Aerospace Daily, a Washington-based industry newsletter, added new allegations about the Israeli nuclear
arsenal. The Daily claimed that Israel has an unspecified number of nuclear-tipped, mobile Jericho II intermediate-range ballistic missiles based in the Negev desert and on the Golan Heights. The Daily also said that Israel possesses nuclear artillery shells. If true, that would mean Israel's atomic capability has been drastically underestimated. Jerusalem had no comment on the newsletter's claims.
Another candidate for bomb-in-the-basement status, South Africa, announced in 1970 that it had developed a new process for uranium enrichment. Since then the government in Pretoria has fiercely protected its putative breakthrough from virtually all curious foreign eyes. In 1977 the Soviet Union, apparently acting on evidence received from one of its spy satellites, notified the U.S. of an installation in South Africa's Kalahari Desert that resembled a nuclear test site under construction. Washington used one of its own satellites to inspect further. Four months later, under pressure from the U.S., South Africa stopped work on the site. In September 1979, a U.S. satellite detected an intense burst of light, similar to the flash created by a small nuclear explosion, over the South Atlantic. A special White House panel of investigators discounted the possibility of an atomic blast, but the U.S. intelligence community has never been totally convinced.
Brazil and Argentina are thought to be much further away from bomb-making capacity, but both countries show serious intentions of retaining at least the option for weapons development, even under their recently restored civilian governments. Both also seemingly intend to involve themselves as much as possible in peaceful nuclear commerce, thus extending an expanding web of nuclear relationships.
The existence of the phantoms challenges many of the ideas that underlie the present nonproliferation system, especially the nonproliferation treaty. The 123 nations that have joined the U.S., the Soviet Union and Britain as signatories have renounced the right to build atomic weapons.* They have also given up a bit of their national sovereignty by agreeing to
allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to nuclear technology on their soil and to demand similar inspection agreements from customers for their nuclear exports. The nonweapons signatories are in turn guaranteed access to the peaceful benefits of nuclear technology.
By refusing to sign or ratify the treaty, the new nuclear powers have implicitly declared their distrust of the nuclear balance of power. Says K. Subrahmanyam, head of India's Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses: "I refuse to be an Uncle Tom who would accept the right of white nations to wield nuclear weapons and have the developing world disarmed and subject to nuclear terrorism." More aggressive variations on that theme can be found in a country like Libya, which has accepted the nonproliferation treaty, but whose erratic anti-Western policies make it a highly suspect adherent.
The phantoms add a nuclear dimension to existing regional conflicts, in the sense that the intrusion of the atom could heighten the possibility of conventional confrontation. A stark example is Israel's 1981 air attack against the French-built Tammuz nuclear reactor in Iraq. The Israeli explanation for the assault was that the regime of President Saddam Hussein secretly intended to build nuclear weapons, even though Iraq had signed the nonproliferation treaty. While ambiguous circumstances surrounded the Iraqi project, including the inordinate size and sophistication of the reactor, which the Iraqis insisted be fueled with weapons-grade uranium, the Israelis have yet to prove their contention. What the Tammuz incident demonstrates is that proliferation is a mix of technical capability and political intent. As the technology spreads, gauging what a country plans to do with its nuclear capability becomes very difficult, if not impossible.
Proliferation is a sensitive issue for the Reagan Administration, which came to office in 1981 severely critical of Jimmy Carter's policies in that area. Under Carter, the U.S. made nonproliferation a highly visible priority and attacked the problem from the supply side, banning U.S. exports that involved uranium enrichment or reprocessing. The centerpiece of the Carter approach was the 1978 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (as distinct from the nonproliferation treaty). That legislation, still in effect, demands that a customer for U.S. nuclear sales promise to place not only the exported item but all its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency inspection, a condition known in the jargon of the nuclear community as "full-scope" safeguards. Among countries exporting nuclear wares, only Canada, Australia and Sweden have adopted a similar stand. Most other suppliers, particularly in Western Europe, insist on the adoption of safeguards only for the particular item being sold.
Failure by a purchaser to agree to Washington's conditions meant no U.S. sale. Congress made the full-scope provisions of the act retroactive; that brought the U.S. into conflict with a number of its long-standing nuclear supply agreements, most notably involving India, Brazil and South Africa. In the Reaganauts' view, the Carter strategy destroyed the credibility of the U.S. as a reliable supplier of nuclear technology and fuel, thus diminishing Washington's ability to exercise influence favorable to nonproliferation practices among developing nations. Says Ambassador Kennedy: "Regardless of its intent, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act was perceived by some countries as a unilateral abrogation of understandings and agreements that had existed for years. We lost enormous amounts of influence." Substantial volumes of business were lost too, as Third World countries turned to Western Europe in search of nuclear fuel and technology that had fewer strings attached. More important, the denial approach does not appear to have contributed significantly to a slowdown in the rate of global proliferation.
The Reagan Administration has attempted to regain leverage. But on the ) whole, U.S. policy has changed little since the Carter years, except in terms of public emphasis. As most experts see it, the approach today differs mainly in using less confrontational tactics and a low-key, even invisible diplomatic style. Says Charles Van Doren, a former deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: "There's much less of a difference than most people would have suggested."
Last summer, for example, at a secret meeting in Luxembourg, the U.S. reportedly asked 13 other industrialized nations to adopt the demand for international inspection of all of a potential customer's nuclear facilities as a sales condition. Only Britain, Canada and Australia supported the idea. Says Leonard Spector, a Washington-based expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Over all, with Reagan, there has been a little more of the carrot approach, a little less of the stick."
The problem is not so much a matter of policy as of the nature of proliferation itself. Where the desire to seek nuclear weapons is strong enough, almost no combination of prohibitive policies has been completely successful in thwarting it. Pakistan is a case study of that uncomfortable conclusion. In 1977 and again in 1979, in an effort to keep Pakistan from pursuing a build-the-bomb strategy, the U.S. cut off military and economic aid following earlier restrictions on nuclear trade. Apparently to little avail.
A turnaround in U.S. policy came after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Overnight, Pakistan was much more essential as a U.S. ally. In 1981 the Reagan Administration offered President Zia a six-year, $3.2 billion military and economic assistance program. The U.S. also agreed to sell 40 advanced F-16 fighter-bombers, which, like most high-performance military aircraft, could carry nuclear weapons. In approving the assistance, Congress attached a rider that the aid would be cut off if Pakistan exploded an atomic device or came into possession of one. That rider expires, along with the aid package, in 1987. Says the Carnegie Endowment's Spector: "Both the Carter and Reagan Administrations had to make trade-offs with other foreign policy issues. It is those events that have stayed America's hand and allowed creeping proliferation."
The history of Pakistan's nuclear effort shows the bedeviling complexity of proliferation and the difficulties involved in containing it. Pakistan's nuclear program got under way in 1955. Over the next nine years, 37 Pakistani scientists were trained at atomic facilities in the U.S., and in 1965 Pakistan began operating its first nuclear reactor, a small research installation supplied by the U.S., under international inspection safeguards. In 1976 the Kahuta center was established.
The chief architect of the Kahuta program was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the populist politician who became President in 1971 and was overthrown by Zia in 1977. (In 1978 the popular Bhutto was hanged by the Zia government for allegedly conspiring to have a political opponent killed.) Bhutto was obsessed by India's nuclear progress. In 1965 he had declared, "If India builds the Bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry. But we will get one of our own."
In 1972, following Pakistan's defeat in the third India-Pakistan war, Bhutto made his move. Less than two months after becoming President, he convened a secret conference of Pakistani scientists and bureaucrats in the city of Multan. There, he launched Project 706, Pakistan's equivalent of the U.S.'s Manhattan Project.
The program developed rapidly along several fronts, some evidently peaceful in intent, others less so. By 1973 the country possessed a Canadian-built commercial nuclear reactor fueled by natural uranium. At about the same time, Bhutto entered negotiations with France for a commercial-scale plutonium- reprocessing plant. It would be capable of extracting from spent fuel more than 300 lbs. of plutonium annually, enough for as many as 30 atom bombs and far more than necessary for Pakistan's peaceful nuclear program.
The agreement with France was signed in 1976. About two years later, under pressure from Washington that was in turn inspired by growing congressional concern, the French decided to stop work on the reprocessing project. By that time, however, Pakistan had reportedly obtained blueprints covering up to 95% of the project, and some French firms apparently continued to give quiet assistance to the effort until the end of 1979. Pakistan has continued to work on the plant, but no completion date can be predicted.
During the reprocessing tussle, Pakistan pulled off its most audacious espionage coup. It came to light after a quiet scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, resigned in March 1976 from his post as a metallurgist at the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory, known as F.D.O., in Amsterdam. The firm was involved in research and development at one of Western Europe's most advanced atomic installations, the URENCO uranium-enrichment facility at Almelo, also in the Netherlands. The plant is today one of Western Europe's major sources of low-enriched uranium for nuclear reactors. High-speed gas centrifuges like those at URENCO -- thousands of devices lined up in rows like washing machines in a laundromat -- can also be used to produce the highly enriched uranium needed for atomic weapons.
During his three-year stint at F.D.O., Khan had copied the plans of the centrifuge process and sent them back to Pakistan. He had revealed to his countrymen the names of more than 100 European, Canadian and U.S. firms that could provide the necessary equipment for a plant. Using a network of phony businesses as cover, Pakistan began to acquire and transfer to Islamabad technology from Western Europe and North America. Items in the covert pipeline ranged from special steel tubing to precision measuring equipment to specialized electronics. In 1978, some 400 tons of uranium oxide, the basic feedstock in producing enriched uranium, was secretly obtained from Niger, with the connivance of Libya.
Pakistan reportedly received hundreds of millions of dollars for Project 706 from Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who in return was permitted to send his scientists to study Pakistan's enrichment advances. Nominally, the Libyan payments were made in return for Pakistani military assistance. Then, in 1977, after Zia came to power, Libya's connection with Project 706 was cut. Zia disliked and distrusted Gaddafi, and turned instead to Saudi Arabia for financial assistance. Saudi Arabia's payments were officially rendered in return for Pakistani military help.
Assembling the centrifuge equipment took years. Khan quietly resurfaced as head of the Kahuta operation in 1976. In November 1984, a Dutch court sentenced him in absentia to four years in prison for espionage, but the sentence was subsequently annulled on a legal technicality.
A further example of Khan's activities came to light last year in Canada, during the trial of three Pakistani-born naturalized Canadians on charges that they had tried to circumvent local export controls. Two officials of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission allegedly asked the trio in July 1980 to buy various components for a device that can be used to spin high-speed centrifuges. The equipment is manufactured by General Electric Co. at a plant in Hudson Falls, N.Y., and at U.S. factories of Westinghouse Electric Corp., RCA Corp. and Motorola Inc. The three Canadians made ten shipments to Pakistan. They were arrested while attempting to ship the eleventh. The trio later denied that they knew the ultimate purpose of the exports. One of them said that the equipment was for use in a textile plant and a food-processing factory. In the end, two of the men paid fines of $3,000 each on a minor charge: failing to obtain an export permit.
Khan oversaw construction of a facility at Kahuta that is capable, according to some estimates, of producing more than 30 lbs. of weapons-grade uranium annually. In February 1984, he announced that Pakistan had mastered the uranium-enrichment process, and later boasted that there is "nothing that stands in our way technically to stop us from enriching to 90% weapons-grade uranium." But he has repeatedly stressed that "Pakistan is not at all interested in nuclear weapons." The fact is that Pakistan has built an enrichment plant without an evident use -- except making bombs.
There have been indications that Pakistan is at work on the task of actually assembling an explosive device. In April 1984, after six months of surveillance, U.S. Customs agents in Houston detained Nazir Ahmed Vaid, a Pakistani businessman. In a case similar to this month's Los Angeles indictment involving Israel, Vaid was charged with attempting to ship to Pakistan 50 Krytrons labeled "bulb/ switches." In September he was given a suspended sentence of two years and five years' probation. He was then deported to Pakistan. Only later did prosecutors learn that documents that had been in their possession for months linked Vaid to the Pakistani nuclear program.
The progress of Project 706 has drawn attention to the gaps that have all along existed on the nonproliferation front. One of the major problems has been lack of effective agreement among suppliers about what technologies are safe to export, and under what circumstances. Following India's 1974 test blast, the U.S. and six other countries agreed on the need for tight export controls on sensitive nuclear equipment. High on the "trigger list" was plutonium-reprocessing and uranium- enrichment technology. The supplier group has since expanded to 21 countries.
Updating the list to keep pace with new technology has proved to be a disconcertingly slow process, however. It was not until last year that the trigger list was expanded to include the equipment used in the centrifuge process. Long before then, Pakistan had acquired the technology, albeit illegally.
Throughout the last few years of the Pakistani saga, the Reagan Administration has been severely criticized in Congress for giving military assistance to the Zia government without extracting further concrete assurances about Pakistan's nuclear program. The official U.S. position remains that Pakistan does not have atomic weapons and has not assembled the nuclear explosives to make them. But a top U.S. official says that the Administration remains "concerned" about Pakistan's efforts to obtain weapons technology. Washington discounts Indian suspicions of Pakistan's nuclear intentions as part of the long-standing rivalry between those two countries. Says a State Department official: "If you just listen to the Indians, you'd come away with the impression that Pakistan has had the bomb for some years." He notes that the U.S. "would not sit idly by" if Pakistan attained the ability to test a bomb, but does not specify what Washington's actions would be. Nonetheless, says Proliferation Expert Weiss, "we're addressing Pakistan's real security needs, but we didn't extract a high enough price for it. Zia is acting as if he's got us over a barrel. We're acting as if we agree with that assessment."
The trouble with Weiss's complaint lies in the assumption that only the U.S. can solve what is a global problem. Says David Fischer, a former assistant director-general of the I.A.E.A.: "The U.S. can no longer legislate the world nuclear industry. That may mean more nonnuclear diplomacy rather than nuclear denial."
Well before the incoming Reaganauts decried the U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Act, West European critics maintained that the law constituted a sledgehammer approach. They resented U.S. efforts to force them down the same road. As Bertrand Goldschmidt, a French physicist and former chairman of the I.A.E.A., puts it, "Applying nonproliferation measures is a delicate matter. It's like using drugs in medicine. If you are too strict, you can push countries into autarky."
What solutions are available? An emerging school of thought views the open acknowledgment of new nuclear arsenals as not such a bad development, especially in the case of Israel. Officially, Jerusalem's long-standing position is that it will not be the first country in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons to the area. Shai Feldman, an expert on strategy at Tel Aviv University, argues differently. He contends that "you can only have a credible nuclear deterrent if the other side believes you have the capability and the will to employ nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. And the only way to have a credible doctrine is to have the public behind you." Accordingly, Feldman feels, Israel should "develop the means and then openly proclaim its willingness to use nuclear weapons."
Proposals like Feldman's seem to mistake the nature of superpower deterrence. The global nuclear balance is maintained not by the mere possession of atomic arsenals, but by weapons systems that are relatively secure from enemy attack. In the Middle East, or in any other Third World context, atomic weapons and their delivery vehicles would be cruder and more vulnerable. Hence there is a dangerous possibility that open proliferation could make the use of nuclear weapons more, rather than less, tempting.
Thus there is good reason to maintain whatever forms of pressure are available and effective against would-be nuclear powers. Even if all else fails, the U.S. and its allies should press insistently to prevent any of the phantoms from testing a nuclear device. That is more than a cosmetic strategy. As the case of India showed in 1974, the brandishing of the ability to explode an atomic device can frighten other countries, in this case Pakistan, into trying to match the effort. Just as bad, such a demonstration might encourage admiring imitators.
Experience shows that a strategy of simply denying U.S. nuclear exports to countries that refuse to accept full-scope safeguards is not very satisfactory. Soon after the nonproliferation act was passed by Congress, for example, some U.S. legislators demanded that the Administration suspend a contract to supply fuel to India's two U.S.-built Tarapur power reactors. The installation has been governed by international safeguards since 1963, but India refuses to accept the principle of all-embracing inspection. In retaliation for the U.S. pressure, New Delhi warned that it would void the existing Tarapur safeguards agreement. If carried out, that action would have totally removed the complex from all outside control, and would have set a bad precedent for the nonproliferation system.
Faced with that possibility, President Carter used discretionary authority to override Congress. After Ronald Reagan took office, the Administration arranged to have France take over the U.S. fuel-supply contract, thus . maintaining the integrity of the Tarapur safeguards, at least until the original supply agreement expires in 1993. Similar efforts were undertaken by the White House to avoid confrontations with Brazil and South Africa on long- standing nuclear-fuel agreements. Without such efforts, the nonproliferation system might be in worse trouble today. Says an official of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: "Safeguards work when there is a cooperative effort to maintain them. When the relationship is adversarial, they don't work as well."
In the export area, the Reagan Administration can claim that its cooperative approach has achieved mild success. Last year South Africa assured Washington that it would administer its nuclear program in line with the "spirit, principles and goals" that underpin the nuclear suppliers' trigger list. The Pretoria government promised that it would not supply nuclear technology, materials or equipment to any other country without International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards or the equivalent provided by the European atomic community, known as EURATOM.
Existing nonproliferation controls should not be abandoned just because they have been less than 100% effective. Seen against the predictions of 20 years ago, the fact that so few phantom proliferators exist today is, as France's Goldschmidt puts it, "a miracle." The nonproliferation treaty and the safeguards system still provide a vital framework for preserving the miracle. It is significant that the countries considered to be the greatest proliferation risks today are those that refuse to sign the treaty. That is proof, says Proliferation Expert Van Doren, that "most countries have some respect for their commitments." Says Herbert Kouts, chairman of the department of nuclear energy at New York's Brookhaven National Laboratory: "I am convinced that without the treaty and the agency, a multitude of nations would have gone nuclear by now. The nonproliferation safeguards have been as effective as we hoped they would be."
Greater and more farsighted cooperation among nuclear suppliers is another necessity. The U.S. and other sellers need to update the export trigger list continuously, even if, as the Pakistan case shows, its mere existence is no defense against espionage or theft. Only more stringent, worldwide security measures will work in combating proliferation by criminal means. Supplier nations need to impose stiffer penalties on individuals and firms that either violate atomic export restrictions or fail to investigate the bona fides of would-be purchasers.
The U.S. has to continue to press its allies to bring export standards into line with the full-scope safeguard concept. That may take time and tact. Says former I.A.E.A. Official Fischer: "There is still suspicion in Western Europe of U.S. motives in pressing for full-scope safeguards." Pressure from Washington is sometimes seen by Europeans as a ploy to improve the U.S. competitive position. Nonetheless, Fischer notes, there has been a "very distinct change" in French export practices over the past decade. U.S. pressure has played a role in that.
One heartening sign is the close cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on proliferation issues. Last November, U.S. and Soviet representatives agreed in Moscow that henceforth they would hold two working sessions a year to discuss the problem. Said a Soviet specialist in U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations in November: "We do not have much time to come to an agreement before nuclear weapons spread to more and more countries that could involve us in a conflict." One example that nuclear powers who abjure the nonproliferation treaty should be encouraged to follow is that of France. Despite their refusal to sign the treaty, the French as long ago as 1968 declared that they would abide by the accord in demanding international safeguards from any country that sought to buy their technology. Both Brazil and Argentina have followed the same practice in recent deals with China; such behavior should be applauded when appropriate and, if possible, rewarded.
At some point the U.S. will have to come to grips with a double standard in its own nonproliferation policy, specifically as it is directed at Israel. While Israel's special relationship with the U.S. makes it an exceptional case, Washington's attitude toward Jerusalem, as Van Doren puts it, "could prove to be the Achilles' heel of our nonproliferation policy." Other would- be nuclear powers cannot fail to note the high levels of U.S. economic and military assistance bestowed on Israel despite its bomb-in-the-basement status and draw their own conclusions about the universal sincerity of U.S. antiproliferation efforts.
If the challenge of proliferation is grim, the situation could be much worse. Playing for time in the effort to curb further growth of the nuclear nemesis has never been time wasted. But the harsh fact cannot be brushed aside: ( proliferation is not an arcane and unpleasant prospect to be avoided but a reality that must be confronted. The world's spreading nuclear capability is far more dangerous than it used to be. Full recognition of that state of affairs is necessary if mankind is ever to quiet its nuclear fears.
FOOTNOTE: *Uranium 235 (U-235) and plutonium 239 (Pu-239) are the radioactive elements used in atom bombs. Uranium enrichment is the process by which the concentration of U-235 in natural uranium is increased, eventually to weapons-grade material. From 33 to 55 lbs. of U-235 at roughly 93% purity can be used in a Hiroshima-size bomb. Reprocessing is the chemical procedure for extracting Pu-239 from the spent uranium fuel of nuclear reactors, where the plutonium is produced as a waste product. A breeder reactor uses plutonium as fuel rather than uranium: by atomic fission, additional uranium placed in the breeder is converted into more plutonium than was consumed in the original reaction.
FOOTNOTE: *France and China have not signed, on the grounds that the treaty is inherently discriminatory against nonweapons states
Source: TIME Magzine
The threat is spreading, and the phantom proliferators lead the way
Jun. 3, 1985
It is called a research center, but the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Research looks more like a fortress. Layers of barbed wire surround the sprawling complex in the dusty hills at Kahuta, 20 miles southeast of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Much of the facility is buried beneath the earth, a precaution against accident -- or perhaps surprise attack. Paratroopers guard the installation, and tanks block all routes into Kahuta. Crotale surface-to- air missiles and antiaircraft guns bristle toward the skies, through which Pakistani air force planes fly round-the-clock patrols. Unauthorized entry to Kahuta is impossible, sightseeing in the vicinity ill advised.
Precise information about what goes on inside Kahuta is virtually unobtainable; the site is one of Pakistan's most closely held defense secrets. Nonetheless, over the past decade the world has been catching occasional, disturbing glimpses of clandestine dealings and espionage coups that have left trails of suspicion leading inexorably back to Kahuta. All those James Bond operations have conveyed the same unsettling message: even though the government of President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq firmly denies it, Pakistan appears to be developing the capacity to build an atom bomb.
But Kahuta is just one outcropping of a far bigger nightmare: nuclear proliferation, the spread of atomic weaponry, has entered a new and ever more ominous phase. As the 40th anniversary of the A-bomb explosion over Hiroshima approaches, the world has special reason to view what is happening with trepidation, at the very least. On the Asian subcontinent, in the Middle East, in southern Africa and, to a lesser degree, in South America, a number of countries have acquired or are in the process of acquiring the capacity to build atomic weapons. At the same time, the fragile international system of self-restraint that the world has built around its most deadly Pandora's box of technology, a system that has worked surprisingly well so far, is under growing strain. Says a senior official of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency: "Proliferation has already happened. The main problem of the late 1980s is not so much preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, but making it survivable."
. Among the signs that illustrate proliferation's disquieting reach:
-- In Moscow on an official visit last week, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi charged that Pakistan's development of an atom bomb was "very close" to fruition. Earlier this month, the Indian leader had affirmed that such an achievement by his country's chief regional rival "will completely change the present military balance on the subcontinent. At no cost will we allow our integrity and security to be compromised." In 1974, India shocked the world with a "peaceful" underground nuclear explosion in the Rajasthan Des- ert; Gandhi's pronouncements hold out the threat that India might resume testing, perhaps even begin to build and stockpile nuclear arms.
-- In Los Angeles, a federal grand jury has indicted a U.S. citizen for exporting to Israel 810 high-speed precision switches known as Krytrons, in contravention of U.S. export laws. It is an open secret that Israel has its own atomic weapons program; Krytrons can be used as part of the trigger mechanism for nuclear arms. But Israel offered to return many of the switches, and the U.S. State Department accepted Jerusalem's explanation that it did not intend to use the devices in its atomic weapons program. Still, the incident demonstrates the ease with which highly sensitive technology necessary for nuclear-arms manufacture can, and does, escape control.
-- In Washington next month, two House Foreign Affairs subcommittees will hold joint hearings on the global spread of plutonium, the highly toxic atomic explosive. An estimated 55 tons of separated plutonium exists in the West, a stockpile that is growing by five to six tons a year. Among the issues likely to be discussed by legislators at the hearings is the potential that plutonium traffic offers to nuclear terrorism.
-- In Geneva in September, delegates from about 85 countries will meet to review progress under the 1968 United Nations-sponsored Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The treaty is the most important accomplishment of the worldwide antiproliferation effort, but it expires in 1995 and there is no guarantee that it will be renewed. The atmosphere at the review session could be tense. Third World countries are expected to criticize the superpowers for failing to work toward nuclear disarmament, a promise embedded in the treaty. To some of the more militant Third World countries, that failure smacks of hypocrisy. The biggest fear is that one of the restive nations might withdraw from the treaty at the September session; if that happened, it would mean a calamitous setback, the first explicit unraveling of the world's major nonproliferation accord.
-- In Washington and elsewhere, nonproliferation experts are concerned over an erosion of confidence in the inspection apparatus of the International Atomic Energy Agency; the system is designed to monitor adherence to nonproliferation standards. The concern focuses on the "safeguards" sponsored by the I.A.E.A. to detect the diversion of peaceful atomic technology to bomb-making purposes. Some experts fear that the safeguard scheme is inadequate to the task at hand, while others are worried that the lack of confidence can itself lead to further weakening of an inspection system that in large measure functions on a basis of trust.
Proliferation invokes atavistic fears and uncertainties because it involves arcane and highly sophisticated technologies: breeder reactors, plutonium reprocessing plants, uranium-enrichment facilities.* Says Leonard Weiss, an expert on the U.S. Senate staff: "Proliferation is a set of symptoms with a number of causes. It is both a political and technical problem. Therefore no single cure, or set of cures, will work."
What experts agree on is the problem's perniciousness. "I used to think that
U.S.-Soviet arms control was the Everest of earthly problems," says Roger Molander, a nuclear expert formerly with the U.S. National Security Council, who now heads the Washington-based Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies. "But that was before I understood nuclear proliferation. It makes the superpower arms race look like a comparatively minor league problem." Says Charles Ebinger of Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies: "It's probably the most pessimistic issue I've ever dealt with. Nobody seems to come up with any solutions, myself included."
The spread of nuclear technology over the past four decades is both an impressive and a daunting achievement. Five countries formally possess nuclear weapons (the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China); India's 1974 test explosion shows that it has at least mastered the capacity to build them. All told, about 345 commercial nuclear power reactors are in operation in 26 countries, and some 52 nations have nuclear research facilities. At least eleven nations possess facilities for the reprocessing of nuclear fuels, all yielding varying amounts of plutonium. Large enrichment facilities to turn uranium into nuclear fuel, or bomb-grade material, exist in the U.S., the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, France and China. Commercial reprocessing plants to extract plutonium from used reactor fuel are located or planned in France, Britain, West Germany, Japan, India and the Soviet Union. Programs involving breeder reactors are under way in the Soviet Union, India, France, West Germany and Japan. (In 1983, the U.S. canceled its $4 billion Clinch River breeder facility, located at Oak Ridge, Tenn., because of long construction delays, steep cost increases and a declining need for additional nuclear power installations.)
The rate of proliferation could grow rapidly worse. Small, easily concealed new technologies for producing nuclear explosives are becoming available in world markets. Among them: high-speed centrifuges and still experimental laser systems for enriched-uranium production. Such systems could be engineered to produce the explosives needed to build the Bomb. Says Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington-based think tank: "History demonstrates that in the nuclear field, any technology ultimately is exported -- and Third World countries will get it."
Despite the overall pessimism that the proliferation issue inspires, there are some grounds for guarded hope. Since World War II, no atomic weapon has been used in warfare; nor have nations rushed to develop nuclear weapons in the numbers that were predicted even 20 years ago. In the early 1960s, it was feared that within a decade ten or more countries might have produced atomic arsenals. In the eleven years since India's nuclear test, no additional country, as far as can be confirmed, has succeeded in following suit.
That record, says Richard T. Kennedy, the Reagan Administration's ambassador- at-large for nonproliferation issues, provides grounds for both "cautious optimism and vigilance." Says he: "The situation ought not to give us a sense of great comfort for the future. But thus far (the nonproliferation system) has worked pretty well. Extraordinary vigilance and extraordinary effort just might give us another 20 years of the same."
Kennedy hastens to add that "there are countries that have gone forward in ways that we don't like. We're very concerned." Indeed, a new generation of nuclear powers, and would-be powers, is maturing. Known among experts as the "phantom proliferators," these countries are contributing the most significant uncertainties about the future of nonproliferation. The phantoms are India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and, to a lesser degree, Argentina and Brazil.
All of them have mastered, or are well on their way to mastering, the skills to produce atomic explosives. Unlike such nations as West Germany and Japan, which have also conquered the technology, the phantoms have declined to forswear the right to build atomic weapons by signing the nonproliferation treaty. As a result, some of their most sensitive nuclear activities are taking place outside the scope of International Atomic Energy Agency inspection.
Some of the phantoms are widely assumed to have atom bombs already or to be close to that goal. The major example of that ambiguous status known as having "a bomb in the basement" is Israel. The Israelis probably developed an atomic weapon as early as 1968, in all likelihood using reprocessed plutonium from their top-secret, French-built research reactor at Dimona, in the Negev desert. By 1973, Israel was believed to possess at least 13 nuclear weapons.
This month the well-regarded Aerospace Daily, a Washington-based industry newsletter, added new allegations about the Israeli nuclear
arsenal. The Daily claimed that Israel has an unspecified number of nuclear-tipped, mobile Jericho II intermediate-range ballistic missiles based in the Negev desert and on the Golan Heights. The Daily also said that Israel possesses nuclear artillery shells. If true, that would mean Israel's atomic capability has been drastically underestimated. Jerusalem had no comment on the newsletter's claims.
Another candidate for bomb-in-the-basement status, South Africa, announced in 1970 that it had developed a new process for uranium enrichment. Since then the government in Pretoria has fiercely protected its putative breakthrough from virtually all curious foreign eyes. In 1977 the Soviet Union, apparently acting on evidence received from one of its spy satellites, notified the U.S. of an installation in South Africa's Kalahari Desert that resembled a nuclear test site under construction. Washington used one of its own satellites to inspect further. Four months later, under pressure from the U.S., South Africa stopped work on the site. In September 1979, a U.S. satellite detected an intense burst of light, similar to the flash created by a small nuclear explosion, over the South Atlantic. A special White House panel of investigators discounted the possibility of an atomic blast, but the U.S. intelligence community has never been totally convinced.
Brazil and Argentina are thought to be much further away from bomb-making capacity, but both countries show serious intentions of retaining at least the option for weapons development, even under their recently restored civilian governments. Both also seemingly intend to involve themselves as much as possible in peaceful nuclear commerce, thus extending an expanding web of nuclear relationships.
The existence of the phantoms challenges many of the ideas that underlie the present nonproliferation system, especially the nonproliferation treaty. The 123 nations that have joined the U.S., the Soviet Union and Britain as signatories have renounced the right to build atomic weapons.* They have also given up a bit of their national sovereignty by agreeing to
allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to nuclear technology on their soil and to demand similar inspection agreements from customers for their nuclear exports. The nonweapons signatories are in turn guaranteed access to the peaceful benefits of nuclear technology.
By refusing to sign or ratify the treaty, the new nuclear powers have implicitly declared their distrust of the nuclear balance of power. Says K. Subrahmanyam, head of India's Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses: "I refuse to be an Uncle Tom who would accept the right of white nations to wield nuclear weapons and have the developing world disarmed and subject to nuclear terrorism." More aggressive variations on that theme can be found in a country like Libya, which has accepted the nonproliferation treaty, but whose erratic anti-Western policies make it a highly suspect adherent.
The phantoms add a nuclear dimension to existing regional conflicts, in the sense that the intrusion of the atom could heighten the possibility of conventional confrontation. A stark example is Israel's 1981 air attack against the French-built Tammuz nuclear reactor in Iraq. The Israeli explanation for the assault was that the regime of President Saddam Hussein secretly intended to build nuclear weapons, even though Iraq had signed the nonproliferation treaty. While ambiguous circumstances surrounded the Iraqi project, including the inordinate size and sophistication of the reactor, which the Iraqis insisted be fueled with weapons-grade uranium, the Israelis have yet to prove their contention. What the Tammuz incident demonstrates is that proliferation is a mix of technical capability and political intent. As the technology spreads, gauging what a country plans to do with its nuclear capability becomes very difficult, if not impossible.
Proliferation is a sensitive issue for the Reagan Administration, which came to office in 1981 severely critical of Jimmy Carter's policies in that area. Under Carter, the U.S. made nonproliferation a highly visible priority and attacked the problem from the supply side, banning U.S. exports that involved uranium enrichment or reprocessing. The centerpiece of the Carter approach was the 1978 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (as distinct from the nonproliferation treaty). That legislation, still in effect, demands that a customer for U.S. nuclear sales promise to place not only the exported item but all its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency inspection, a condition known in the jargon of the nuclear community as "full-scope" safeguards. Among countries exporting nuclear wares, only Canada, Australia and Sweden have adopted a similar stand. Most other suppliers, particularly in Western Europe, insist on the adoption of safeguards only for the particular item being sold.
Failure by a purchaser to agree to Washington's conditions meant no U.S. sale. Congress made the full-scope provisions of the act retroactive; that brought the U.S. into conflict with a number of its long-standing nuclear supply agreements, most notably involving India, Brazil and South Africa. In the Reaganauts' view, the Carter strategy destroyed the credibility of the U.S. as a reliable supplier of nuclear technology and fuel, thus diminishing Washington's ability to exercise influence favorable to nonproliferation practices among developing nations. Says Ambassador Kennedy: "Regardless of its intent, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act was perceived by some countries as a unilateral abrogation of understandings and agreements that had existed for years. We lost enormous amounts of influence." Substantial volumes of business were lost too, as Third World countries turned to Western Europe in search of nuclear fuel and technology that had fewer strings attached. More important, the denial approach does not appear to have contributed significantly to a slowdown in the rate of global proliferation.
The Reagan Administration has attempted to regain leverage. But on the ) whole, U.S. policy has changed little since the Carter years, except in terms of public emphasis. As most experts see it, the approach today differs mainly in using less confrontational tactics and a low-key, even invisible diplomatic style. Says Charles Van Doren, a former deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: "There's much less of a difference than most people would have suggested."
Last summer, for example, at a secret meeting in Luxembourg, the U.S. reportedly asked 13 other industrialized nations to adopt the demand for international inspection of all of a potential customer's nuclear facilities as a sales condition. Only Britain, Canada and Australia supported the idea. Says Leonard Spector, a Washington-based expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Over all, with Reagan, there has been a little more of the carrot approach, a little less of the stick."
The problem is not so much a matter of policy as of the nature of proliferation itself. Where the desire to seek nuclear weapons is strong enough, almost no combination of prohibitive policies has been completely successful in thwarting it. Pakistan is a case study of that uncomfortable conclusion. In 1977 and again in 1979, in an effort to keep Pakistan from pursuing a build-the-bomb strategy, the U.S. cut off military and economic aid following earlier restrictions on nuclear trade. Apparently to little avail.
A turnaround in U.S. policy came after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Overnight, Pakistan was much more essential as a U.S. ally. In 1981 the Reagan Administration offered President Zia a six-year, $3.2 billion military and economic assistance program. The U.S. also agreed to sell 40 advanced F-16 fighter-bombers, which, like most high-performance military aircraft, could carry nuclear weapons. In approving the assistance, Congress attached a rider that the aid would be cut off if Pakistan exploded an atomic device or came into possession of one. That rider expires, along with the aid package, in 1987. Says the Carnegie Endowment's Spector: "Both the Carter and Reagan Administrations had to make trade-offs with other foreign policy issues. It is those events that have stayed America's hand and allowed creeping proliferation."
The history of Pakistan's nuclear effort shows the bedeviling complexity of proliferation and the difficulties involved in containing it. Pakistan's nuclear program got under way in 1955. Over the next nine years, 37 Pakistani scientists were trained at atomic facilities in the U.S., and in 1965 Pakistan began operating its first nuclear reactor, a small research installation supplied by the U.S., under international inspection safeguards. In 1976 the Kahuta center was established.
The chief architect of the Kahuta program was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the populist politician who became President in 1971 and was overthrown by Zia in 1977. (In 1978 the popular Bhutto was hanged by the Zia government for allegedly conspiring to have a political opponent killed.) Bhutto was obsessed by India's nuclear progress. In 1965 he had declared, "If India builds the Bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry. But we will get one of our own."
In 1972, following Pakistan's defeat in the third India-Pakistan war, Bhutto made his move. Less than two months after becoming President, he convened a secret conference of Pakistani scientists and bureaucrats in the city of Multan. There, he launched Project 706, Pakistan's equivalent of the U.S.'s Manhattan Project.
The program developed rapidly along several fronts, some evidently peaceful in intent, others less so. By 1973 the country possessed a Canadian-built commercial nuclear reactor fueled by natural uranium. At about the same time, Bhutto entered negotiations with France for a commercial-scale plutonium- reprocessing plant. It would be capable of extracting from spent fuel more than 300 lbs. of plutonium annually, enough for as many as 30 atom bombs and far more than necessary for Pakistan's peaceful nuclear program.
The agreement with France was signed in 1976. About two years later, under pressure from Washington that was in turn inspired by growing congressional concern, the French decided to stop work on the reprocessing project. By that time, however, Pakistan had reportedly obtained blueprints covering up to 95% of the project, and some French firms apparently continued to give quiet assistance to the effort until the end of 1979. Pakistan has continued to work on the plant, but no completion date can be predicted.
During the reprocessing tussle, Pakistan pulled off its most audacious espionage coup. It came to light after a quiet scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, resigned in March 1976 from his post as a metallurgist at the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory, known as F.D.O., in Amsterdam. The firm was involved in research and development at one of Western Europe's most advanced atomic installations, the URENCO uranium-enrichment facility at Almelo, also in the Netherlands. The plant is today one of Western Europe's major sources of low-enriched uranium for nuclear reactors. High-speed gas centrifuges like those at URENCO -- thousands of devices lined up in rows like washing machines in a laundromat -- can also be used to produce the highly enriched uranium needed for atomic weapons.
During his three-year stint at F.D.O., Khan had copied the plans of the centrifuge process and sent them back to Pakistan. He had revealed to his countrymen the names of more than 100 European, Canadian and U.S. firms that could provide the necessary equipment for a plant. Using a network of phony businesses as cover, Pakistan began to acquire and transfer to Islamabad technology from Western Europe and North America. Items in the covert pipeline ranged from special steel tubing to precision measuring equipment to specialized electronics. In 1978, some 400 tons of uranium oxide, the basic feedstock in producing enriched uranium, was secretly obtained from Niger, with the connivance of Libya.
Pakistan reportedly received hundreds of millions of dollars for Project 706 from Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who in return was permitted to send his scientists to study Pakistan's enrichment advances. Nominally, the Libyan payments were made in return for Pakistani military assistance. Then, in 1977, after Zia came to power, Libya's connection with Project 706 was cut. Zia disliked and distrusted Gaddafi, and turned instead to Saudi Arabia for financial assistance. Saudi Arabia's payments were officially rendered in return for Pakistani military help.
Assembling the centrifuge equipment took years. Khan quietly resurfaced as head of the Kahuta operation in 1976. In November 1984, a Dutch court sentenced him in absentia to four years in prison for espionage, but the sentence was subsequently annulled on a legal technicality.
A further example of Khan's activities came to light last year in Canada, during the trial of three Pakistani-born naturalized Canadians on charges that they had tried to circumvent local export controls. Two officials of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission allegedly asked the trio in July 1980 to buy various components for a device that can be used to spin high-speed centrifuges. The equipment is manufactured by General Electric Co. at a plant in Hudson Falls, N.Y., and at U.S. factories of Westinghouse Electric Corp., RCA Corp. and Motorola Inc. The three Canadians made ten shipments to Pakistan. They were arrested while attempting to ship the eleventh. The trio later denied that they knew the ultimate purpose of the exports. One of them said that the equipment was for use in a textile plant and a food-processing factory. In the end, two of the men paid fines of $3,000 each on a minor charge: failing to obtain an export permit.
Khan oversaw construction of a facility at Kahuta that is capable, according to some estimates, of producing more than 30 lbs. of weapons-grade uranium annually. In February 1984, he announced that Pakistan had mastered the uranium-enrichment process, and later boasted that there is "nothing that stands in our way technically to stop us from enriching to 90% weapons-grade uranium." But he has repeatedly stressed that "Pakistan is not at all interested in nuclear weapons." The fact is that Pakistan has built an enrichment plant without an evident use -- except making bombs.
There have been indications that Pakistan is at work on the task of actually assembling an explosive device. In April 1984, after six months of surveillance, U.S. Customs agents in Houston detained Nazir Ahmed Vaid, a Pakistani businessman. In a case similar to this month's Los Angeles indictment involving Israel, Vaid was charged with attempting to ship to Pakistan 50 Krytrons labeled "bulb/ switches." In September he was given a suspended sentence of two years and five years' probation. He was then deported to Pakistan. Only later did prosecutors learn that documents that had been in their possession for months linked Vaid to the Pakistani nuclear program.
The progress of Project 706 has drawn attention to the gaps that have all along existed on the nonproliferation front. One of the major problems has been lack of effective agreement among suppliers about what technologies are safe to export, and under what circumstances. Following India's 1974 test blast, the U.S. and six other countries agreed on the need for tight export controls on sensitive nuclear equipment. High on the "trigger list" was plutonium-reprocessing and uranium- enrichment technology. The supplier group has since expanded to 21 countries.
Updating the list to keep pace with new technology has proved to be a disconcertingly slow process, however. It was not until last year that the trigger list was expanded to include the equipment used in the centrifuge process. Long before then, Pakistan had acquired the technology, albeit illegally.
Throughout the last few years of the Pakistani saga, the Reagan Administration has been severely criticized in Congress for giving military assistance to the Zia government without extracting further concrete assurances about Pakistan's nuclear program. The official U.S. position remains that Pakistan does not have atomic weapons and has not assembled the nuclear explosives to make them. But a top U.S. official says that the Administration remains "concerned" about Pakistan's efforts to obtain weapons technology. Washington discounts Indian suspicions of Pakistan's nuclear intentions as part of the long-standing rivalry between those two countries. Says a State Department official: "If you just listen to the Indians, you'd come away with the impression that Pakistan has had the bomb for some years." He notes that the U.S. "would not sit idly by" if Pakistan attained the ability to test a bomb, but does not specify what Washington's actions would be. Nonetheless, says Proliferation Expert Weiss, "we're addressing Pakistan's real security needs, but we didn't extract a high enough price for it. Zia is acting as if he's got us over a barrel. We're acting as if we agree with that assessment."
The trouble with Weiss's complaint lies in the assumption that only the U.S. can solve what is a global problem. Says David Fischer, a former assistant director-general of the I.A.E.A.: "The U.S. can no longer legislate the world nuclear industry. That may mean more nonnuclear diplomacy rather than nuclear denial."
Well before the incoming Reaganauts decried the U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Act, West European critics maintained that the law constituted a sledgehammer approach. They resented U.S. efforts to force them down the same road. As Bertrand Goldschmidt, a French physicist and former chairman of the I.A.E.A., puts it, "Applying nonproliferation measures is a delicate matter. It's like using drugs in medicine. If you are too strict, you can push countries into autarky."
What solutions are available? An emerging school of thought views the open acknowledgment of new nuclear arsenals as not such a bad development, especially in the case of Israel. Officially, Jerusalem's long-standing position is that it will not be the first country in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons to the area. Shai Feldman, an expert on strategy at Tel Aviv University, argues differently. He contends that "you can only have a credible nuclear deterrent if the other side believes you have the capability and the will to employ nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. And the only way to have a credible doctrine is to have the public behind you." Accordingly, Feldman feels, Israel should "develop the means and then openly proclaim its willingness to use nuclear weapons."
Proposals like Feldman's seem to mistake the nature of superpower deterrence. The global nuclear balance is maintained not by the mere possession of atomic arsenals, but by weapons systems that are relatively secure from enemy attack. In the Middle East, or in any other Third World context, atomic weapons and their delivery vehicles would be cruder and more vulnerable. Hence there is a dangerous possibility that open proliferation could make the use of nuclear weapons more, rather than less, tempting.
Thus there is good reason to maintain whatever forms of pressure are available and effective against would-be nuclear powers. Even if all else fails, the U.S. and its allies should press insistently to prevent any of the phantoms from testing a nuclear device. That is more than a cosmetic strategy. As the case of India showed in 1974, the brandishing of the ability to explode an atomic device can frighten other countries, in this case Pakistan, into trying to match the effort. Just as bad, such a demonstration might encourage admiring imitators.
Experience shows that a strategy of simply denying U.S. nuclear exports to countries that refuse to accept full-scope safeguards is not very satisfactory. Soon after the nonproliferation act was passed by Congress, for example, some U.S. legislators demanded that the Administration suspend a contract to supply fuel to India's two U.S.-built Tarapur power reactors. The installation has been governed by international safeguards since 1963, but India refuses to accept the principle of all-embracing inspection. In retaliation for the U.S. pressure, New Delhi warned that it would void the existing Tarapur safeguards agreement. If carried out, that action would have totally removed the complex from all outside control, and would have set a bad precedent for the nonproliferation system.
Faced with that possibility, President Carter used discretionary authority to override Congress. After Ronald Reagan took office, the Administration arranged to have France take over the U.S. fuel-supply contract, thus . maintaining the integrity of the Tarapur safeguards, at least until the original supply agreement expires in 1993. Similar efforts were undertaken by the White House to avoid confrontations with Brazil and South Africa on long- standing nuclear-fuel agreements. Without such efforts, the nonproliferation system might be in worse trouble today. Says an official of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: "Safeguards work when there is a cooperative effort to maintain them. When the relationship is adversarial, they don't work as well."
In the export area, the Reagan Administration can claim that its cooperative approach has achieved mild success. Last year South Africa assured Washington that it would administer its nuclear program in line with the "spirit, principles and goals" that underpin the nuclear suppliers' trigger list. The Pretoria government promised that it would not supply nuclear technology, materials or equipment to any other country without International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards or the equivalent provided by the European atomic community, known as EURATOM.
Existing nonproliferation controls should not be abandoned just because they have been less than 100% effective. Seen against the predictions of 20 years ago, the fact that so few phantom proliferators exist today is, as France's Goldschmidt puts it, "a miracle." The nonproliferation treaty and the safeguards system still provide a vital framework for preserving the miracle. It is significant that the countries considered to be the greatest proliferation risks today are those that refuse to sign the treaty. That is proof, says Proliferation Expert Van Doren, that "most countries have some respect for their commitments." Says Herbert Kouts, chairman of the department of nuclear energy at New York's Brookhaven National Laboratory: "I am convinced that without the treaty and the agency, a multitude of nations would have gone nuclear by now. The nonproliferation safeguards have been as effective as we hoped they would be."
Greater and more farsighted cooperation among nuclear suppliers is another necessity. The U.S. and other sellers need to update the export trigger list continuously, even if, as the Pakistan case shows, its mere existence is no defense against espionage or theft. Only more stringent, worldwide security measures will work in combating proliferation by criminal means. Supplier nations need to impose stiffer penalties on individuals and firms that either violate atomic export restrictions or fail to investigate the bona fides of would-be purchasers.
The U.S. has to continue to press its allies to bring export standards into line with the full-scope safeguard concept. That may take time and tact. Says former I.A.E.A. Official Fischer: "There is still suspicion in Western Europe of U.S. motives in pressing for full-scope safeguards." Pressure from Washington is sometimes seen by Europeans as a ploy to improve the U.S. competitive position. Nonetheless, Fischer notes, there has been a "very distinct change" in French export practices over the past decade. U.S. pressure has played a role in that.
One heartening sign is the close cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on proliferation issues. Last November, U.S. and Soviet representatives agreed in Moscow that henceforth they would hold two working sessions a year to discuss the problem. Said a Soviet specialist in U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations in November: "We do not have much time to come to an agreement before nuclear weapons spread to more and more countries that could involve us in a conflict." One example that nuclear powers who abjure the nonproliferation treaty should be encouraged to follow is that of France. Despite their refusal to sign the treaty, the French as long ago as 1968 declared that they would abide by the accord in demanding international safeguards from any country that sought to buy their technology. Both Brazil and Argentina have followed the same practice in recent deals with China; such behavior should be applauded when appropriate and, if possible, rewarded.
At some point the U.S. will have to come to grips with a double standard in its own nonproliferation policy, specifically as it is directed at Israel. While Israel's special relationship with the U.S. makes it an exceptional case, Washington's attitude toward Jerusalem, as Van Doren puts it, "could prove to be the Achilles' heel of our nonproliferation policy." Other would- be nuclear powers cannot fail to note the high levels of U.S. economic and military assistance bestowed on Israel despite its bomb-in-the-basement status and draw their own conclusions about the universal sincerity of U.S. antiproliferation efforts.
If the challenge of proliferation is grim, the situation could be much worse. Playing for time in the effort to curb further growth of the nuclear nemesis has never been time wasted. But the harsh fact cannot be brushed aside: ( proliferation is not an arcane and unpleasant prospect to be avoided but a reality that must be confronted. The world's spreading nuclear capability is far more dangerous than it used to be. Full recognition of that state of affairs is necessary if mankind is ever to quiet its nuclear fears.
FOOTNOTE: *Uranium 235 (U-235) and plutonium 239 (Pu-239) are the radioactive elements used in atom bombs. Uranium enrichment is the process by which the concentration of U-235 in natural uranium is increased, eventually to weapons-grade material. From 33 to 55 lbs. of U-235 at roughly 93% purity can be used in a Hiroshima-size bomb. Reprocessing is the chemical procedure for extracting Pu-239 from the spent uranium fuel of nuclear reactors, where the plutonium is produced as a waste product. A breeder reactor uses plutonium as fuel rather than uranium: by atomic fission, additional uranium placed in the breeder is converted into more plutonium than was consumed in the original reaction.
FOOTNOTE: *France and China have not signed, on the grounds that the treaty is inherently discriminatory against nonweapons states
Source: TIME Magzine
