LONDON, 13 February 2004 — It remains unknown precisely how far nuclear technology was spread by a smuggling ring led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said yesterday.

Khan, the architect of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, had been willing to sell nuclear secrets “to anybody who could pay his price”, Straw told a joint press conference in London with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Straw was speaking a day after US President George W. Bush sought global support for tighter curbs on nuclear know-how.

Khan publicly admitted last week leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He asked for forgiveness, and was pardoned by Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf.

“We don’t still know the full scale of the activity, but as President Bush explained in his speech last night, what we had here was somebody who had made a bomb, an operational bomb, who knew all the technology and who was selling this on the black market basically to anybody who could pay his price, and we know that he had sold this technology to Libya and to other countries,” Straw said.

The world owned “a very great debt of gratitude” to US and British intelligence agencies who uncovered the nuclear ring, Straw added.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, described it as an atomic “supermarket” for states interested in nuclear weapons.

Many of the companies never knew their equipment was going to countries under embargo since the black marketeers went to great lengths to disguise the identities of the end users.

Following is a list of countries and how they might be linked to the IAEA’s investigation of this illicit procurement network. Diplomats said the list will get longer.

Pakistan — Diplomats familiar with the IAEA investigation say Pakistani nuclear know-how and technology was leaked to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Iran may have acquired uranium enrichment centrifuge technology based on designs developed by British-Dutch-German firm Urenco directly from some Pakistanis.

Pakistan’s government says Khan was working alone and without the knowledge of the government or military. Analysts and Western diplomats have said they find this hard to believe.

Khan worked at Urenco in the 1970s. Pakistan is known to have acquired and developed Urenco-based centrifuges as the basis of its uranium enrichment operation, which is the backbone of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program.

It is unclear whether Khan headed the well-organized black market, as is widely assumed. IAEA’s ElBaradei said Khan was the “tip of an iceberg” and Western diplomats have said there may have been other experienced nuclear scientists overseeing it.

Khan or the people close to him are also suspected of selling Libya designs for nuclear weapons which Tripoli recently handed over to US, British and IAEA experts, diplomats said.

• Austria — An Austrian firm is being investigated for possibly providing magnets that could be used in Urenco centrifuges.

• Belgium — At least one Belgian company may have provided Iran with nuclear equipment.

• China — Supplied Iran with natural uranium, uranium hexafluoride — the gas used in centrifuges to enrich uranium — and numerous other items.

• Dubai — Diplomats in Vienna told Reuters the Dubai company Gulf Technical Industries LCC (GTI) may have been the black market’s headquarters and handled orders, procurement and arranged shipping for its customers.

GTI is run by Sri Lankan businessman B.S.A. Tahir, who police said is cooperating with investigators and is not in custody. Tahir is believed to be close to Khan and the main middleman out of five identified by Iran, diplomats said.

• Germany — Iran identified three Germans who it said may have been middlemen in its acquisition of uranium-enrichment technology. Two of them, Otto Heilingbrunner and Gotthard Lerch, were former senior employees of German vacuum technology maker Leybold Heraeus.

Today Leybold is a pared-down unit of the Swiss firm Unaxis AG, called Leybold Vakuum GmbH.

Heilingbrunner told Reuters that he had been named as a middleman though he denied ever helping Iran get nuclear technology. Lerch, who lives in Switzerland, has not been answering his telephone.

A third German named by Iran, Heinz Mebus, is dead.

In the 1980s, Heilingbrunner and Lerch were investigated by German authorities but proceedings halted in 1990 for lack of evidence.

Several other German firms may be investigated on suspicion of supplying parts for Iran’s enrichment program, diplomats said.

• Japan — One Japanese company is being investigated for providing equipment to be used in Iran’s enrichment program. The company may not have known who the end user was.

• Malaysia — Malaysian police are investigating B.S.A. Tahir, the Sri Lankan businessman who ordered components to be manufactured by Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn Bhd (SCOPE), part of the Scomi Group Bhd, which is controlled by the Malaysian prime minister’s son, Kamaluddin Abdullah, and two other investors.

SCOPE said it was told the dual-use components were for oil and gas equipment, not for centrifuges. The parts were seized by the United States en route to Libya in a German ship.

• Netherlands — Both Iran and Libya have technology developed by a Dutch unit of the uranium enrichment firm Urenco, where Khan worked in the 1970s. Khan was convicted in absentia of nuclear espionage though the conviction was later overturned on a technicality.

Urenco denies ever supplying Iran or any other country with its classified design information.

• Russia — A long-time, major supplier to Iran’s nuclear program, Russia is building Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor. It is still unclear what role Russian institutes and companies played in the nuclear black market, though diplomats say Russia was certainly involved.

• South Africa — Several scientists from this former nuclear power are believed to have provided their technical expertise without government knowledge, diplomats said.

• South Korea — An export firm was found to have sold four South Korean-made dual-use balancing machines, used to balance centrifuges, to Libya in June 2002.

The machines were discovered during an IAEA inspection of Libya in December 2003.

• Spain — Diplomats told Reuters one or two Spanish companies were being investigated for possibly making and shipping equipment to Libya for its nuclear program. They said the allegation concerned equipment that was not used in the enrichment program and was therefore not extremely sensitive.

The company may not have known the identify of the end user of the components, shipped via Dubai.

• Switzerland — German-born Gotthard Lerch lives in Switzerland where he set up shop after leaving Leybold. He has been named by Iran as a middleman. One diplomat said Lerch could have been a “significant” player in the black market story.

• United States — Some US companies may have unwittingly provided nuclear equipment to Iran, diplomats said.

It is unclear what sort of equipment and whether the orders were filled.