'Syria, Egypt may have nuke parts'
David Horovitz, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 2, 2005
The former Mossad chief and national security adviser Ephraim Halevy has raised
fears that Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt might have acquired some kind of
nuclear capability via an illicit nuclear weaponry trafficking network operated
by A.Q. Khan, one of the key scientists behind Pakistan's nuclear program.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Halevy, who resigned as Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's national security adviser in late 2003, referred to a New York
Times article from early last week that detailed the scale and possible
recipients of what the paper termed "the largest illicit nuclear proliferation
network in history."
Khan, Halevy said, had been "purveying his goods extensively in the Middle
East." And while Israel was understandably concerned by the threat of Iran
going nuclear, he went on, "maybe we should be looking beyond the lamppost.
Maybe the lamppost is Iran and we should be looking elsewhere."
Specifically, he said, there were "question marks" about Syria, Saudi Arabia
and Egypt.
Halevy stressed that he had no firm information, and indeed that he'd not had
any recent access to classified information. But it "could well be" that those
countries might have a nuclear capability Israel was not aware of. "It's
certainly something that should be looked at," he urged.
The Times article noted that the United States and its allies had apparently
failed to detect that Khan began selling nuclear technology to Iran in the late
1980s, "the opening transaction for an enterprise that eventually spread to
North Korea, Libya and beyond."
And it said that while US President George W. Bush has boasted that the Khan
network has now been dismantled, investigators doubt this is the case.
American intelligence officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency are
still untangling details of Khan's travels to 18 countries in the years before
his arrest last year, the paper reported. Among the countries he visited,
apparently "to buy materials like uranium ore or sell atomic goods," were
Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And federal and private experts quoted by the
Times said that "Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Algeria, Kuwait, Myanmar and Abu Dhabi were all on the suspected list of
customers."
"The most delicate investigations" in the hunt for "nuclear rogue states," said
the Times, were those involving important US allies "including Egypt and Saudi
Arabia." No hard evidence of clandestine nuclear arms programs had surfaced, it
said, although "suspicious signs have emerged" regarding Saudi Arabia.
.
|
