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Pakistan used plutonium in May 30 test

C K Arora in Washington

The Central Intelligence Agency has informed President Clinton, in a highly classified report last month, that material released into the atmosphere during an underground nuclear test by Pakistan last May contained low levels of weapons-grade plutonium.

The Washington Post, quoting US national security officials, says the implications of the preliminary analysis, conducted at Los Alamos national laboratory, were that Pakistan was either importing or producing plutonium without US knowledge and, with it, could build smaller, easy-to-conceal, longer-range nuclear weapons that would be more threatening to neighbouring India, which recently acknowledged its nuclear capability.

But scientists at the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory and other government experts are contesting the accuracy of the initial analysis, alleging that Los Alamos contaminated and then lost the air sample from the Pakistan blast. The Washington Post says the CIA declined to comment last week and has not changed its initial assessment. The agency has at times been slow to accept changes that might reflect poorly on its initial judgment, the newspaper adds.

In this case, it quotes one US intelligence official having said that, ''there is some disagreement here, and experts at the labs need to sort it out.''

Brooke Anderson, a spokeswoman for the department of energy, which administers the laboratories, said Friday night that Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ''has asked the lab directors for a full report on the procedures used.''

As the flap over the sample analysis demonstrates, US intelligence experts and scientists are having trouble keeping up with the demands to monitor and detect the secret development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons around the world.

The questions surrounding the test results should remain unanswered eight months after Pakistan conducted its first nuclear test ''is a terrible miscarriage of how the system is supposed to work,'' said Christopher Paine, a senior researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.

Said one official working to resolve the matter, ''you can imagine how scientists want to protect their work. I am thoroughly convinced that the original test was wrongly interpreted.''

On May 11 and 13, India conducted its first underground nuclear tests since 1974. Pakistan followed suit 15 days later with the first of six tests that ended with the May 30 explosion that is the subject of the present dispute.

The Washington Post said secret, high-flying US aircraft collected air samples in May and brought them back to Los Alamos and at least one other classified laboratory for examination. But it was one of the air samples collected from the May 30 test that set off alarms because smaller and more powerful plutonium-based weapons could fit more easily onto ballistic missiles than those fueled by the highly enriched uranium that Pakistan has produced for years.

The CIA assessment was eventually included in the highly classified briefing book Clinton reviewed before he met with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief at the White House on December 2. Sources declined to say whether Clinton raised the plutonium issue with Sharief at the meeting.

At the same time, however, US experts on Pakistan's weapons programme were expressing serious doubts about the Los Alamos analysis and requested a retest.

But the original sample was lost, so scientists are unable to reevaluate it. A government official said an identical air sample is available at a second laboratory, but several people with knowledge of the events say that sample is not identical to the lost one.

Nevertheless, scientists believe it will be possible to positively determine whether the initial analysis was faulty.

The issue is being taken up by the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, an interagency group that monitors foreign nuclear proliferation, said two government officials.

The Washington Post says the dispute comes at a time of growing concern over nuclear proliferation by India and Pakistan. ''It's part of a trend we've been seeing,'' said a senior national security official. 'the more they move towards these weapons, the more they create a destabilising situation.''

In fact, recent intelligence reports carry indications that both countries are continuing to develop their nuclear capability and missiles that could one day carry the weapons across borders.

The reports indicate that Pakistan's nuclear reactor at Khushab, which has been under construction for years in the Punjab province, is fully operational and will soon be capable of producing 5 to 10 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually, enough for one bomb. But the only plant capable of processing the plutonium located at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology is small and would not be able to handle the quantities of plutonium produced at the Khushab reactor unless it is modified.

UNI

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