China behind Pak atomic bomb
''China gave Pakistan nearly everything it needed to make its first atomic bomb.''
''Beijing is also helping to build a plant to produce M-11 missiles in Pakistan. If the Chinese continue to help at the present rate, the plant could be ready for missile production within a year.''
Disclosing this to the Senate foreign relations committee, a leading US arms control expert has presented a paper listing details of the Chinese assistance to Pakistan's nuclear
weapons and missile programmes in the last 17 years.
Professor Gary Milhollin, director, Wisconsin project on nuclear arms control, told the committee that China gave Pakistan a tested nuclear weapons design and enough high-enriched uranium fuel in the early 1980s.
China also helped Pakistan produce high-enriched uranium with gas
centrifuges, he said. More recently, it had helped Pakistan
build a reactor to produce plutonium and tritium for nuclear
weapons besides playing a key role in increasing the number of its
centrifuges so that it could boost Islambad's high-enriched
uranium production.
He said the most recent Chinese export was of specialised ring
magnets, which are used in the suspension bearings of gas centrifuge
rotors. The sale was revealed in early 1996. The magnets were
shipped directly to a secret nuclear weapon production site in
Pakistan.
''In my opinion, this export violated China's pledge under the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which it joined in 1992,''
said Professor Milhollin of the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Determining that China had violated the US missile sanctions law a second
time, Washington applied sanctions for two years in 1993. A year later, the United States lifted the sanctions, when China pledged once more to stop its missile sales
and comply with the Missile Technology Control Regime. The missile exports, however, continued, he added.
Professor Milhollin said US satellites and human intelligence had
watched missile technicians travel back and forth between Beijing
and Islamabad and had also watched steady transfers of
missile-related equipment. ''US officials say China's missile
exports continue till the present moment,'' he
added.
US officials, he said, had learned that they were duped in
1992 and 1994 . ''It is clear that China has not complied with the
MTCR in the past, that it is not complying now, and that it probably
never will comply unless something happens to change China's
attitude on this question.
The US government is concerned that Pakistani scientists might receive nuclear weapon-related information through their visits to the Chinese Academy of
Engineering Physics, he said. The academy designs nuclear weapons.
Besides Professor Milhollin, other experts -- Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies dean Paul Wolfowitz, Institute for Global Chinese Affairs director James R Lilley and East Asia non-proliferation project director, Dr Bates Gill
-- who appeared before the
Senate panel also voiced concern over China's role in the
proliferation of mass destruction weapons.
Following is the chart depicting what Professor Milhollin calls China's
dangerous exports to Pakistan:
1980 to 1984: Supplies nuclear bomb design and its fuel; helps build Hatf missiles; helps with gas centrifuges to enrich uranium.
1985 to 1989: Agrees to sell tritium gas to boost the yield of fission bombs; ships equipment for M-11 nuclear capable missiles; starts building a 300 mw nuclear reactor at Chashma in spite of de facto international supply embargo.
1990 to 1997:: Secretly delivers more M-11 components; trains Pakistani nuclear technicians in China; continues to deliver components for M-11 missiles; supplies more than 30 M-11 missiles at Sargodha air force base near Lahore; helps build a secret 50-70 mw plutonium production reactor at Khusab, and nearby fuel fabrication or reprocessing plant; supplies blueprints and equipment for a missile factory near Rawalpindi, now under construction; supplies ring magnets used in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium; supplies heavy water to Kanupp nuclear reactor; sells a high-tech furnace and diagnostic equipment with military applications; ships rocket fuel, seized en route in Hong Kong; agrees to build Chashma-2, a second 300 mw nuclear reactor.
UNI
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