SINGAPORE, 6 February 2004 — Osama Bin Laden may wish he had met Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. But even if he had, and used his millions to buy bomb plans, the Al-Qaeda chief would have had great difficulty obtaining weapons materials.
Experts say it is highly unlikely that Bin Laden and his shadowy, scattered network has got anywhere close to acquiring the technology for a nuclear weapon, but they prefer not to rule out the possibility.
Bin Laden’s most likely source is top Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who appeared on state television on Wednesday to make a dramatic personal apology for leaking atomic secrets, the latest twist in a proliferation scandal stretching from Libya to Iran and North Korea. “One can only speculate because of the absence of hard evidence, but from what we know these nuclear plans have been handed over only to nation states,” said security expert Andrew Tan of Singapore’s Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.
Experts said there was no evidence that Khan or any of the scientists at his Khan Research Laboratory or at Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission had passed nuclear secrets to Al-Qaeda.
“Even if they did, it is not sure that Al-Qaeda would have the infrastructure to develop nuclear weapons based on the information and technology it had received,” said Tan.
“What has happened is disturbing and one of the greatest fears has been of a nuclear state passing what it knows around — particularly to terrorists,” Tan said.
Al-Qaeda is suspected of having an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, biological or chemical, but no evidence of a program was found in searches of Al-Qaeda bases after the fall of the Taleban in Afghanistan.
Two Pakistani nuclear scientists who worked on Pakistan’s highly secret uranium enrichment program were detained in October 2001 on suspicion of sharing information with bin Laden, but were released two months later.
Both were reported to have met bin Laden and Taleban chief Mulla Omar during trips to Afghanistan while working for Ummah Reconstruction, a charity agency that developed flour mills and agricultural projects in Afghanistan. Information would be insufficient for Al-Qaeda.
“The more significant question is whether Al-Qaeda can get hold of highly enriched uranium,” said counter-terror expert Clive Williams of the Australian National University in Canberra.
Possession of even 15 kg of that fissile material would enable Al-Qaeda to build a relatively unsophisticated bomb in a safe house and blow it up, causing destruction in a large city on the scale of the Hiroshima bomb, Williams said.
The difficulty for Al-Qaeda would be to obtain uranium, with Russia and Ukraine the most likely sources via black marketers. “If the price were right you’d have to assume they would do it,” said Williams, but added that any seller would be aware that the price might not be worth the international retaliation.
It was unlikely that North Korea, believed to be developing highly enriched uranium from material mined at home, would sell to groups such as Al-Qaeda since it is following a domestic agenda of using the threat of its nuclear ambitions to try to gain recognition and aid from the United States.
Experts have long said it might be easier for Al-Qaeda to create a dirty bomb — a cocktail of non-fissile material and explosives capable of creating damage but that would spread radioactivity over only a limited area.
The nuclear scandal in Pakistan had been brewing for weeks amid an investigation of Khan. It reached a climax on Wednesday when the scientist, respected at home as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, made a somber address on state television to absolve the government and fellow scientists of any blame.
A military official told Pakistani journalists on Sunday that Khan had made a detailed statement confessing to supplying designs, hardware and materials used to make enriched uranium for atomic bombs to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Pakistan originally denied its nuclear secrets and technology had been leaked, either officially or by individuals.
It launched an investigation in November after the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency provided evidence pointing to Pakistani involvement in Iran’s nuclear program. Similar links have been found with Libya.
