Nuclear know-how made easy, report on Libya shows
A study by the IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, says sensitive documents on bombs were available as e-mail.
BEIRUT — A leaked report by a U.N. agency revealed fresh details about Libya's now-abandoned attempts to obtain nuclear weapons and an underground network of scientists who peddled atomic secrets for cash.
Before deciding to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons, Libya had tapped into a sophisticated black-market network that included Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, said a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, prepared for delivery Friday to its governing board.
Though Libya was far from obtaining nuclear weapons, a probe into its program showed how easily nuclear secrets could be passed around. Most of the sensitive documents for enriching nuclear material and designing weapons were being put into electronic form, allowing for e-mailing or for transportation on memory sticks, said the report by the IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency.
The report, prepared ahead of a Sept. 22 meeting of the agency's board of governors, revealed few major surprises about Libya's quest to obtain nuclear weapons. But it filled in some blanks.
"What the IAEA report shows is that illicit nuclear trade has been around for a long time," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank that posted a copy of the report on its website. "It shows that the illicit nuclear trade has been key to the progression of many secret nuclear weapons programs."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Libya this month to meet with the country's longtime leader, Moammar Kadafi. His nation was under heavy U.S. sanctions until it decided in late 2003 to renounce support for militant groups, abandon its nuclear program and come clean on the details of its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
The IAEA report makes clear that although Libya had bought tons of uranium and some advanced equipment, it had been unable to start enriching the material.
"The Libyans didn't seem very competent at this," said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. "They weren't able to even get the centrifuges that they bought working."
According to the report, Khan offered in 1984 to sell the Libyans high-speed centrifuges to produce enriched uranium, which can be used as fissile material in a nuclear bomb. But the Libyans decided that they didn't have the human or financial resources to make the deal.
