SINGAPORE, 21 November 2002 — North Korea had the nearest thing to a nuclear delivery system suitable for Pakistan’s purposes. Pakistan had the bomb and the means to teach Pyongyang to make its own.

The time was the mid-1990s, both states were beleaguered. North Korea was isolated from the world of its own volition, by its dogged adherence to the ideology of juche, or self-reliance, created by late supreme leader Kim Il Sung.

Pakistan was a pariah, in trouble and slapped with sanctions because everyone — or at least the United States — was pretty sure it was clandestinely engaged in trying to obtain missile and fissile technology from China.

In what has become a classic maneuver, the two outcasts found a way into each other’s arms and arsenals and created one of the most frightening nuclear threats on earth, say Pakistani sources close to the talks who declined to be identified.

Negotiations must have gone on for at least a decade between the two militaries — the Koreans eager to develop nuclear weapons, the Pakistanis desperate for a strategic delivery system that would ensure a potent deterrent to neighboring India.

An opportunity presented itself in 1993 when newly elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto decided her first foreign visit should take her to close ally China. Oddly enough, she then made a two-day side-trip to Pyongyang.

That visit seemed incongruous at the time. Benazir said her visit would focus on economic relations, including North Korean assistance in building small hydroelectric dams in Pakistan. In fact, the trip had other power systems in mind, said one Pakistani source. Benazir had undertaken the tour at the behest of her military, which wanted a chance to sit down with their North Korean counterparts and hammer out details of a deal they had been negotiating for some time, the source said.

"The military basically just told her what to do and she went along," said the source. "That was the deal she made with the army for winning office." She was accompanied by Defense Minister Aftab Shabban Mirani, but he played no key role, the sources said.

Taking a quiet back seat in the delegation but running the show were Pakistan military officers, if not also the powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency, the sources said.

Reports also say that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the nuclear scientist known as the father of Pakistan’s bomb, has visited North Korea several times, at least once in recent years. (R/AFP)