TEN MORE NATIONS HAVE NUCLEAR ARMS ON THE DRAWING BOARD- IF NOT IN HAND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201260004-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0201260004-0
RT E 7PPEAREB 'A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
6 June 1985
Ten more nations may have nuclear arms o.
drawing board if not in hand
By John K. Cooley Companies in France, Switzerland, Belgium, and
Special to The Christian Science Monitor West Germany all have reportedly helped Pakistan work
London toward keeping the promise of the late Prime Minister
As the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to "make an Islamic bomb, even if
Britain, and France build up their existing nu- we have to eat grass to do it."
clear arsenals, about 10 other countries are ap- An engineer in Freiburg, West Germany, recently con-
proaching or achieving the capability to make - victed and fined for illegal exports of sensitive nuclear
and deliver - home-grown nuclear weapons. equipment, allegedly helped Pakistan acquire a uranium
This is the conclusion of a six-month investiga- hexafluoride plant, an important link in enriching ura-
tion by ABC News, which discloses new prolif- nium 235 to the high degree needed for weapons.
eration of nuclear-weapons capability in, Latin French firms and Belgium's Belgonucleaire earlier
America, South Asia, and the Middle East: - provided assistance for the Pinstech reprocessing plant,
President Kennedy predicted in 1963 that by, near Islamabad, Pakistan. It produces plutonium which
the end of the 1970s "15 to 20 to 25 nations" J,will soon be enough for two bombs a year. In Kahuta,
might have the bomb. Pakistan, an enrichment plant is reportedly in operation,
This was never realized because the 1968 Non- and diplomats and newsmen have in past years been
Proliferation Treaty and safeguards of the Inter- beaten up for getting too close to it.
national Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have Munir Ahmed Khan, chairman of the Pakistan
helped many states decide that "they would be Atomic Energy Commission, at first declined to discuss
better off without nuclear weapons," says David Kahuta with this writer. Later he told ABC that "we are
Price, an analyst at the Stockholm International carrying out research and development in enrichment
,Peace Research Institute, an arms control using the centrifuge process." Centrifuges are normally
foundation. used to separate uranium 235 from less fissionable iso-
But Leonard S. Spector, a.leading US expert topes of uranium. Highly enriched uranium 235 can be
1 on nonproliferation, wrote in, the , Bulletin of the used in nuclear weapons.
!Atomic Scientists in, January, "Although no new British experts and US intelligence sources have re-
for
nation tested a first nuclear device during 1984 Po at stan been combmg Europe
. all of the threshold countries appear to have shaped-steel plates. These 't over the two steel emi-
taken steps, in some case significant, toward de- spheres enclosing the nuclear explosive, somewhat e
veloping or expanding nuclear weapons capa- 'the sections of a soccer ball.
bilities." Western intelligence believes China provided a bomb
Mr. Spector, author of "Nuclear Proliferation design to Pakistan. This was one factor that led the US
Today," included in the category of "threshold administration and ongress to delay an agreemen or
nuclear-power reactors that rest en Reagan mitaffM in
countries Pakistan, India, Israel, Argentina,
Brazil, Iraq, Libya, and South Africa. Fekmg last Apnl. In the design, a conventional explosive
Investigation in and about the threshold na- is placed between hemispheres and plates, causing the
tions disclosed new information, .some of which is implosion that produces a nuclear blast.
highly frustrating for the `Reagan. administra- Last June, Nazir Ahmed Vaid, a Pakistani, was ar-
tion's anti-proliferation hopes and disappointing for the rested in the US and later deported after trying to buy 50
IAEA safeguards system. krytrons, devices that can be used to trigger nuclear
Today's greatest proliferation danger may lie in South weapons.
admitted it had imported about 80
Asia, according to experts in Vienna and Stockholm. Israel recently
India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi told a reporter krytrons but said they were used for nonnuclear explo-
earlier this year, "If we [had] wanted to make bombs in sions. An American' is being prosecuted in Los Angeles
these 11 years" since India's test of what it referred to as for allegedly smuggling the krytrons to Israel....
a "peaceful" nuclear device on May 18, 1974, "we could It is widely assumed that Israel's frequnt statement
have." that it "will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons
Mr. Gandhi said India has not taken such a step. But into the Mideast" thinly masks a considerable Israeli nu-
!in recent press interviews, he has said that India is con- clear arsenal ready for instant assembly.
sidering how to respond to the possibility that Pakistan Carl Duckett, a former deputy director at the Central
has a nuclear weapon. - Intelligence Agency, said in 1981 that the CIA estun'- ate
US government experts see no evidence that India has ! that weapons-grade uranium (more than 200 pounds,
,produced any more "devices" since 1974. They do be- %enough for four bombs) allegedly went to Israel -n a
Ilieve, however, that through its safeguarded and firm called NUMEC in Apollo, a. Israel extracts dra-
unsafeguarded network of advanced nuclear installa- nium from its phosphates and is believed by specialists
lions, India has increased its capability to produce import South African uranium as well:`
I enough weapons-grade plutonium to soon produce 10 nu- Israeli-developed techniques, such as laser separation
clear bombs a year. of uranium isotopes, are believed by the same specialists
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0201260004-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201260004-0
A
to have been shared with South Africa, wnicn was appar-
ently preparing to test a bomb in the Kalahari Desert in
1979. Soviet and US satellites spotted the appareusutest
preparations and ,wed the Pretoria regime to desist.
Antinuclear in London and Washington re-
cently declared-public US documents "prove"
that a mysterious flash detected by a US satellite over
the South Atlantic in September 1979 was a joint Israel-
South African tit. ? ' ? ? - ' , I .
At Dimona, in Israel's Negev Desert, France provided
.
nmmtom __
reprocessing plant nearby and recently enlarged Using Saudi Arabian intermediaries and possibly
Dimona's capacity. . Saudi cash, Syria and Iraq reportedly both showed inter-
Now, Israeli sources say, the US is exerting "strong est when a gang of international drug and arms traffick-
pressure" on France not to sell Israel two 950-megawatt ers, and alleged Western intelligence officials, dangled
power reactors. Israel has not signed the Non-Prolifera- nuclear bait before them, according to interviews in Italy
Lion Treaty and does not allow safeguards inspection of and court documents provided by Italian judge Carlo
all its nuclear plants. (The Non-Proliferation Treaty is Palermo.
I due for review at a Geneva conference in September.) Three "atomic bombs " referred to as "the toys" in
France would have to supply virtually all of the $2 bil- telex messages seen by this writer, were a arently of
Ilion to $3 billion in credits if the deal went through. Isra- fered toabbetween 1980 and 1982 by an o cial of the
Tel's economy is virtually bankrupt. ormer ugan HaNd Bank in stralia. '[he bank was
Since Israeli planes destroyed Iraq's French-built Ici~by Wald Street Journal reits on Aug. 17 and 18,
Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad in 1981, much 1983,.as.a suspected cover for I activities,..
Arab-world attention has shifted to Libya. Heavy US In y, u ge Palermo reached the -conclusion that
government persuasion on Belgium last fall, and guaran- ! such "bombs" did not actually exist but were offered in a
tees from French and German competitors that they ploy to see how Syrians or others would respond.
:would not take Belgium's place, stopped a $1 billion deal A telex in the court records shows that a Saudi,
for nuclear wares and services to Col. Muammar Qaddafi "Sheikh Awany al-Faisal," deposited some $800 million
by Belgonucleaire, a partially state-owned Belgian firm. in the Deutsche Bank of West Germany to pay for the
Libya has signed and ratified the Non-Proliferation "bombs." But the "buyers" shied away when Israeli and
Treaty. It disavows nuclear-weapons intentions- With South African agents apparently learned (or were told) of
Soviet help, it operates a 25-megawatt experimental reac- 'the proposed transaction.
,tor for research at Tajura, near Tripoli, Libya. IAEA in- What did exist, the Italian records show, was a large
spectors and even Western experts have seen it and pro- quantity of enriched uranium said to have been stolen
nounced it "clean." from French stocks and offered Iraq by the traffickers. .
But reports continue to circulate in the intelli gence At first, Iraq accepted. But then, perhaps smelling a
community that Libya either already operates or seeks to trap, it pulled out of the deal for enriched uranium.
operate a clandestine, nonsafeguarded uranium-enrich- The writer, a former Monitor staff correspondent,
ment facility. is now an ABC News correspondent based in Lon -
Syria is the only Arab neighbor of Israel left out of re- don and specializing in the Middle East. A three-
cent efforts to get Israel and the Arabs to negotiate a hour ABC News television program, on which this
article is based, is scheduled to air this evening. The,
show is called "The Fire Unleashed "
4-
trade of peace for territory that Israel conquered. The
Syrian government has generally been cautious in its
statements about nuclear weapons. It has received Soviet
proposals for future nuclear electricity plants - which
the Soviet exporters always safeguard with great care.
However, the Syrian defense minister, Gen. Mustafa
Tlas, said in an ABC News interview last year that he
"hopes" the Arabs can develop nuclear weapons, "be-
cause this is necessary to their independence." He told
Der Spiegel, a West German magazine, that the Soviets
nuclear help in the 1950s. At the time, Israel built a 26- had promised to defend Syria with a nuclear umbrella of
megawatt reactor capable of producing enough pluto- their own weapons, if necessary, in case of a nuclear first
Israel has also built a strike by Israel.
-I,- bomb a year
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201260004-0