Mark Hibbs , Nucleonics Week, January 22,
2004 (for personal use only)
(http://www.uga.edu/cits/documents/html/xcnews41.htm)
The Netherlands government Jan. 19 confirmed that its
domestic intelligence agency Algemene Inlichtingen- en
Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) is investigating suspected diversion of
know-how and possibly materials related to centrifuge enrichment to
Iran, North Korea, and Libya, in part via third parties in and from
Pakistan. A similar investigation is also underway in Germany, Western
officials said.
Data which has come to light suggest that uranium enrichment programs
in Iran, North Korea, and Libya are all based on original and virtually
identical Urenco centrifuge design information featuring G-1 rotor tube
segments 1,000 millimeters in length which may be connected by a
bellows to replicate the G-2 centrifuge. In the case of Iran and Libya,
the rotor tubes are made of aluminum. Western officials said last year
U.S. intelligence suspected that North Korea's program was based on
using G-1 maraging steel rotor tube segments to build the G-2
centrifuge.
While evidence indicates that the rotor tubes show basic identity,
Western officials said the centrifuges also share key fingerprints
which point to certain engineering breakthroughs made by Urenco over
previous generic Zippe-type centrifuges. ''The true signatures for
these (G-type) machines,'' one European centrifuge expert said, ''are
in components such as lower bearing assemblies and bellows, and in
gas-withdrawal systems.'' A Dutch businessman and engineer who was
exonerated in a 1980 investigation related to the export of a large
consignment of maraging steel to Pakistan, and who in 1985 was
convicted for illegal export of dual-use equipment to Pakistan, more
recently has been prevented from exporting other commodities to that
country from Amsterdam and Vienna by lack of export authorizations.
Last year, the same individual was involved in setting up the Eighth
International Symposium on Advanced Materials (ISAM-2003), sponsored by
the KRL in Islamabad. The organizing committee for ISAM-2003 included
another scientist at the University of Leuven who had worked with A.Q.
Khan in Europe during the 1970s.
According to Frank Slijper, a Groningen researcher into the Dutch arms
trade, the Leuven scientist during the 1990s was appointed as a
director of the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering, Science
& Technology, where he joined A.Q. Khan. In 1972, the two
scientists had co-authored a textbook on physical metallurgy.
The list of sponsors for ISAM-2003 also included the firm Gemco
Pakistan (Pvt.). Its listed business activities are similar to those of
a Dutch firm named Gemco, but the Eindhoven-based company has denied
there is any formal connection with the Pakistan organization.
Historical personnel links between the two firms may be probed by
investigators, sources said this week.
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