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By MATT KELLEY
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - An Israeli businessman accused of being a middleman in the nuclear black market worked to supply not only Pakistan but also its archrival India, court records indicate.
South Africa-based Asher Karni faces felony charges of exporting nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan. But court files in the case also include e-mail exchanges between Karni and an Indian businessman who was trying secretly to buy material for two Indian rocket factories.``Be careful to avoid any reference to the customer name,'' warned one message from Karni's Indian contact, Raghavendra ``Ragu'' Rao of Foretek Marketing (Pvt.) Ltd.
The messages offer a rare glimpse into such dealings. Federal prosecutors filed them in court as part of their attempts to persuade a judge to keep Karni behind bars before his trial.
After conferring with U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay on Thursday, lawyers for both sides agreed to postpone a bond hearing for Karni until next Tuesday. L. Barrett Boss, one of Karni's lawyers, declined comment after the hearing.
Karni, 50, has pleaded innocent. Federal agents arrested him on New Year's Day when he arrived in Denver for a ski vacation.
Authorities accuse Karni of using front companies and falsified documents to buy nuclear bomb triggers in the United States and ship them to Pakistan.
The United States is pressuring Pakistan to shut down the black-market network it used to supply its nuclear weapons program and in turn to supply Iran, North Korea and Libya with nuclear technology. A key scientist in Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, said this month that he ran the network but insisted Pakistan's government was not involved.
Rao's e-mails from India ask Karni to procure three kinds of high-tech equipment while concealing that they were meant for the two rocket labs. The United States restricts exports of missile-related material to the two organizations, the Liquid Propulsion Systems Center and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center.
An August 2002 e-mail from Rao to Karni warns Karni to conceal the final customer of an accelerometer to the LPSC, noting its export is restricted because of its ``possibility of being used in guidance systems for missiles.''
Rao did not respond to AP e-mails seeking comment Thursday.
Prosecutors said they found his e-mails while searching a laptop computer and six computer discs Karni had when he was arrested.
The court files also include records of other deals Karni made with his contact in Pakistan, Humayun Khan of the company Pakland PME. One involved Khan's urgent request last May for Karni to buy infrared sensors for AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles - which Pakistan uses on its F-16 fighter planes for air-to-air combat.
While it is unclear whether that deal went through, the request shows Karni must have known Khan had ties to the Pakistani military, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Bratt argued in court documents.
Another deal which apparently was completed was Humayun Khan's request for a sophisticated oscilloscope, a measuring device that could be used in nuclear weapons programs. For that deal, the documents indicate, Karni used the same U.S. intermediary he used for the bomb triggers: Giza Technologies Inc. of Seacaucus, N.J.
In an August e-mail to Giza head Zeki Bilmen, Karni said he had a ``new project'' for Giza. ``It is very important that they will not know it is coming to S.A. (South Africa),'' Karni wrote.
Karni in May had asked the oscilloscope maker, Tektronix Inc., if he could buy an oscilloscope for Pakistan, but the company told him to ask for a U.S. export license first, court records indicate. There is no indication Karni contacted Tektronix directly again.
Bilmen has declined comment. Neither he nor his company have been charged, though Bratt wrote that agents searched Giza's offices in December at the same time South African police raided Karni's offices in Cape Town.
The criminal case against Karni centers on his efforts to buy devices called triggered spark gaps from PerkinElmer Optoelectronics of Salem, Mass. The devices can be used in machines to break up kidney stones, but exports are restricted because they also are key to triggering nuclear detonations.
A PerkinElmer representative in France rebuffed Karni's efforts to buy spark gaps last spring, saying Karni had to certify they would not be used in nuclear weapons. Khan urged Karni to try harder, writing in an e-mail: ``I know it is difficult but that's why we came to know each other.''
Karni then used Giza as a front to buy 66 spark gaps from PerkinElmer, prosecutors allege.
Giza said on shipping documents the spark gaps were destined for a South African hospital, but Karni repackaged them and sent them on to Pakistan, court documents allege.
A court filing from Karni's Colorado lawyers includes a letter purportedly from the Pakistani user of the triggers, saying they had been sent to ``Agha Khan Foundation University & Hospitals'' in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The Aga Khan Foundation does not have any hospitals in Sri Lanka, however. Its hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, has only one of the kidney stone treatment machines. PerkinElmer executives told U.S. authorities that even the largest hospital would need only two or three of the triggers for a kidney treatment center, not dozens of them.
02/19/04 16:54 EST
