U.S. stopped Japan export of nuclear weapons equipment to Pakistan+

TOKYO, Feb. 16 Kyodo - A Japanese trading company extensively involved in exporting equipment to Pakistan that was used in its once clandestine nuclear weapons program, was forced to scrap the sale of a key uranium enrichment equipment after the United States became aware of the deal, a source connected to the company said Monday.

The source said it was under U.S. pressure that a Japanese major heavy
machinery maker stopped the sale of power supply inverters to Pakistan through
Western Trading, a Tokyo-based trading firm which went bankrupt in 2004.
The inverters are vital for the supply of electricity to centrifuges used to
enrich uranium in Pakistan's nuclear program spearheaded by Pakistan's
disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Khan, who had been released from house arrest earlier this month, acknowledged
in a recent written interview with Kyodo News that Western Trading and other
Japanese companies played a key role in supplying equipment to Pakistan in the
1970s and 1980s.
Japan's parliament took up the issue of Pakistan's attempt to buy power
inverters from Japan in 1981, but the fact that the United States acted behind
the scenes in stopping the inverter deal had never been disclosed in detail.
According to the former Western Trading employee who spoke to Kyodo News on
condition of anonymity, a Pakistani businessman, the late Mian Mohammad Farooq,
who was in charge of procuring equipment for Khan's nuclear program, approached
Western Trading in 1979 for the power inverters.
Western Trading, the former employee said, sent a senior executive and a
marketing man to Islamabad and gave Khan an estimate for the inverter deal.
The employee said Khan signed the contract on the spot for a deal involving
power inverters, which were needed to stabilize the frequency of power supply
to high-speed centrifuges for enriching weapons-grade uranium.
With the contract in hand, Western Trading ordered the equipment from the major
heavy machinery maker based in Tokyo but the deal fell through.
The inverter maker told Western Trading it had received word that the United
States wanted the deal stopped, the Western Trading source said.
When Western Trading ordered the inverters, the company intended to export them
to Pakistan ''for use in textile machinery.''
Khan confirmed to Kyodo News that he had attempted to buy the inverters from a
Japanese company that produced inverters for textile manufacturing. He said
after the deal with Western Trading was scrapped, he got the equipment from
Germany and other sources.
A Japanese Foreign Ministry official who was then involved in Japan's nuclear
power policy told Kyodo News that the information about Pakistan's attempt to
buy power inverters from Japan came from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo around 1979
or 1980.
The inverters were not on the list of proscribed transactions of the Nuclear
Suppliers Group, a group of nuclear supplier countries which seeks to
contribute to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and were not subject to
Japan's export control laws.
Khan, who ran the Khan Research Laboratories, was in charge of developing a
nuclear weapon with enriched uranium.
One of the major acquisitions from Japan, according to Khan, was the import of
ring magnets, also a key device needed to manufacture centrifuges.
Like several other countries, ''Japan was also a very, very important country
for our imports,'' Khan said.
According to the former Western Trading employee, his company in the late 1980s
exported to Pakistan at least 6,000 ring magnets produced by a major Japanese
metals manufacturer.
A Pakistani court earlier this month declared Khan a free man, abolishing his
five-year house arrest and other government-imposed restrictions.
Khan, who headed Pakistan's uranium enrichment program from 1976 to 2001,
confessed in 2004 to transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North
Korea, but he later retracted the confession and claimed he had been framed and
made a scapegoat.
He was pardoned in 2004 by then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in
consideration of his services to Pakistan's nuclear program, but remained under
virtual house arrest.
According to the court verdict, Khan is now free to talk to the media and
express his views in public, free to carry out research and free to move in the
country so long as he notifies the government in advance.
==Kyodo
2009-02-16 22:28:52