Sioux City Journal,
17 April 2004

Head of Pakistan`s nuclear ring made repeated visits to uranium-rich Africa

The disgraced father of Pakistan`s atomic bomb made repeated trips to several uranium-rich African nations with his nuclear chiefs and suppliers at a time he was seeking customers and materials for his black-market trade, according to hotel records and witnesses.

Abdul Qadeer Khan and his entourage traveled together as late as February 2002 -- a year after Pakistan said it had shut down his nuclear trafficking -- using a hotel Khan funded in remote Timbuktu as a Sahara Desert base, an Associated Press investigation found.

Khan`s trips, dating to at least 1998 when Pakistan first tested a nuclear bomb, have heightened concerns the scientist may have secretly helped impoverished, unstable regimes interested in weapons or profits from illicit atomic deals.

At the time of Khan`s 1999 visit to Nigeria, the country was seeking fuel for a research reactor that China had built for it the same year, according to documents filed with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Still, no public evidence of any Khan nuclear trade beyond Libya has emerged in Africa yet and the Pakistan government and the U.N. nuclear agency investigating his international dealings refused to comment.

Three senior Bush administration officials told AP the United States is investigating whether Khan`s network supplied countries other than Libya, North Korea and Iran. Signaling the issue`s sensitivity, the officials spoke on condition of anonymity, refusing to name countries or even continents.

Among other nations, Khan visited Sudan, Mali, Nigeria and Niger -- significant because all have known or suspected uranium deposits, said Jon Wolfsthal, a former nuclear weapons adviser to the U.S. Energy Department.

Sudan, a hard-line Islamic regime with past links to banned weapons programs, is on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and harbored al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden until 1996.

Trial testimony in al-Qaida`s 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa alleged that al-Qaida had tried to obtain uranium in Africa.

Niger`s uranium ore -- obtained via Libya -- helped Pakistan launch its nuclear weapons program by 1980, giving the Islamic world its first atomic bomb and making Khan a national hero in Pakistan.

In oil-rich Nigeria, the country`s 1980s-era leaders spoke of building a "Black Bomb" as a counterweight to South Africa, then under white rule despised throughout Africa.

"The two obvious possibilities are (Khan) was looking to secure supplies of uranium for Pakistan or to line up potential suppliers for his customers," said Wolfsthal, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

The revelations about Khan`s extensive Africa travel come after Pakistan confirmed in February that Khan had supplied weapons technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

Khan and top lab officials with whom he had traveled have been under house arrest, although Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan after he confessed his role.

Libya and South Africa are the only African countries to have acknowledged starting nuclear-weapons programs, and both have given them up -- Libya only this year under U.S. and British pressure.

The gear Libya bought through the Khan network included a design for a nuclear warhead, 4,000 centrifuges to separate weapons-grade uranium and canisters of ordinary uranium hexafluoride gas, U.S. officials say.

Beyond Libya and South Africa, "the chances that someone in Africa at least started a nuclear program are fairly high," said Michael A. Levi, science and technology fellow at the U.S.-based Brookings Institution.

"If that happened, Khan was almost certainly involved," Levi said.

Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Clinton administration, said that with the means and motives to seek advanced weapons, "Sudan strikes me as the most worrisome of the lot."

Officials inside the African governments all denied any weapons involvement with Khan or wouldn`t comment. Khan refused comment.

Sudan`s Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told AP the country had never sought nuclear weapons. "We have never tried," he said.

Wolfsthal and other analysts doubt any of the African countries have the expertise to enrich uranium and make a nuclear weapon.

Shannon Kyle of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute suggested Khan could have been proffering military goods in exchange for materials needed to run Pakistan`s atomic program.

"One could wonder that it could be ballistic missiles or other military hardware," he said.

Three of Khan`s trips to sub-Saharan states between 1998 and 2000 were detailed in an Urdu-language memoir published in 2000 by a devoted associate, A.M. Siddiqui, a London-based accountant.

Siddiqui`s son, Abu Siddiqui, was convicted in England in 2001 for buying nuclear-related equipment for Khan in Europe and America from 1995 to 1998. A judge gave the younger Siddiqui a suspended sentence, saying he believed the convict`s claim he did not know about Khan`s status as head of Pakistan`s nuclear weapons program.

Both Siddiquis were involved in the Khan network`s deals with Libya, two senior U.S. officials said. Abu Siddiqui also was a business partner with the network`s alleged money man, Sri Lankan Buhary Abu Sayed Tahir, in the European branch of Tahir`s Dubai-based computer business.

Khan and his nuclear team visited Niger in February 1999 and February 2000, Siddiqui wrote. Proliferation experts suspect the Pakistani scientists may have been seeking more Niger uranium. Siddiqui`s memoir notes, "Niger has big uranium deposits."

Niger government officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The impoverished country`s uranium mine is under control of a company owned in France and two other foreign countries.

Siddiqui refused in a telephone call to provide AP with details of the substance of Khan`s trips. He said he was ill with cancer.

By 2000, Khan was visiting Africa often enough that he decided to open a hotel in Timbuktu, an ancient center of trans-Saharan study and trade.

Khan gave tour guide Abderhamane Alpha Maiga funding for the hotel, Maiga told AP. Maiga named Hotel Hendrina Khan after Khan`s South African wife.

The elder Siddiqui was in Khan`s entourage during the Pakistani scientist`s last confirmed visit to Timbuktu, nearly a year after Khan had resigned from the nuclear lab in March 2001 in what Pakistan`s president later said was a forced departure to halt his weapons trade.

Khan was still traveling with top Pakistani nuclear officials -- all of whom have been detained or questioned in Pakistan -- according to a guest registry examined by AP at the Hotel Hendrina Khan.

Critics question why Pakistan still allowed Khan so much freedom.

"It`s up to a year after his removal and he`s still going with his entire top staff ... to travel to Africa?" asked Gaurav Kampani of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies based in Monterey, Calif.

"He`s removed but he still has a lot of authority," said Kampani. "What is he doing?"

"I don`t believe he did all that himself," Maiga said in the weeks after Pakistan confirmed Khan`s illicit nuclear dealings internationally.

"He must have had help that came from the highest level of government," says Maiga, reaching a conclusion that Pakistan has adamantly rejected.