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http://deccanherald.com/deccanherald/oct102006/national2054362006109.asp
Thank you, Pakistan for making this world a little more dangerous. If your scientists cannot compete with India on their own perhaps you should just quit than giving nuclear weapons into the hands of crazy governments.
Pakistan has emerged as the joker in the pack of the North Korean nuclear programme that culminated in a nuclear test Monday.
For the past decade and more the two countries have been close collaborators with Islamabad gaining missile technology from North Korea in exchange for supplying Pyongyang with nuclear knowhow.
In the past Pakistani officials have denied giving warhead data to the North Koreans, claiming that the co-operation was limited to giving Pyongyang centrifuges for its clandestine uranium enrichment programme.
In 2005 President Pervez Musharraf admitted that ââ¬Åprobably a dozen centrifugesââ¬Â were exported to North Korea, but said there was no evidence that the deal included the transfer of weapons design.
But there have been persistent reports that North Korean scientists were present during at least one of the Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998 and there has been speculation that the sixth Pakistani test which had traces of plutonium, was actually a joint test for a North Korean-made device.
The history of the two countriesââ¬â¢ collaboration goes back to the early 1990s when Pakistanââ¬â¢s infamous Dr A Q Khan negotiated the purchase of North Korea's Nodong missile components and blueprints, which Pyongyangââ¬â¢s scientists had reverse engineered from Soviet-origin Scud B missiles bought from Egypt.
The Nodong was later rechristened the Ghauri and makes up the main nuclear missile strike force of the Pakistani military. Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto has confirmed how after a state visit to North Korea in 1993, she personally carried back to Islamabad the Nodongââ¬â¢s blueprints held on computer discs.
Bhutto and others claim that the North Koreans were only given cold cash in return for the blueprints.
In a 2004 interview Bhutto said, ââ¬ÅWhen I went to North Korea A Q Khan told me we can get their missile technology so that we can compare it to our own. So I took it up with Kim Il Sung... and he agreed... it was cash they needed and so it was done for cash.ââ¬Â
Between 1997 and April 1998, when Khan first tested the Ghauri, the North Koreans are believed to have exported the components of 12 Nodong missiles to Islamabad. Khan himself is thought to have visited North Korea at least 13 times after 1997.
When former Kim Il Sung aide Hwang Jang-yop defected to the West in 1997 he testified there had been an agreement to exchange long range missiles for enrichment technology from Pakistan.
Why North Korea felt the need to acquire enrichment technology has never been explained. The bomb it tested on Sunday is believed to have been based on plutonium and American experts say they believe Pyongyang has enough plutonium for at least another five tests.
Open options
But, as with Saddam Hussein in the past, the North Koreans, interest in enrichment may simply have been a way of keeping open all their options.
It was the South Korean intelligence service that first alerted the West to North Koreaââ¬â¢s attempt to purchase equipment for uranium centrifuges based on designs that Dr Khan had stolen from the URENCO consortium in Europe.
When a French cargo ship was intercepted in the Suez Canal in 2002 its cargo revealed 200 metric tons of German-made aluminium tubing secretly intended for North Korea.
Subsequent investigations established that the tubings were enough for 4,000 centrifuges and matched the exact casings for a URENCO centrifuge.
In 2002 a CIA report declared, ââ¬ÅThe United States has remained suspicious that North Korea has been working on uranium enrichment for several years. However we did not obtain clear evidence indicating that North Korea had begun investigating a centrifuge facility until recently.
North Koreaââ¬â¢s goal appears to be a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational.ââ¬Â
Thank you, Pakistan for making this world a little more dangerous. If your scientists cannot compete with India on their own perhaps you should just quit than giving nuclear weapons into the hands of crazy governments.