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Source Gives Details of Iran Nukes Deal
By ROHAN SULLIVAN Associated Press Writer

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V0983.AP-Malaysia-Nuclea.html

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP)--Rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold nuclear weapons-making equipment to Iran for $3 million and had enriched uranium shipped to Libya for its atomic program, police said Friday, citing the alleged financier of an international trafficking network.

In the first insider's account of the black-market nuclear program, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir told Malaysian police that Khan asked him to send two containers of used centrifuge parts from Pakistan to Iran in 1994 or 1995.

Tahir also said Libya received enriched uranium from Pakistan in 2001, police said.

President Bush has called Tahir the ``chief financial officer and money launderer' of the network run by Khan, who gave the Islamic world its first atomic bomb.

Tahir is in Malaysia and has been questioned by authorities about his connections to Khan in this Southeast Asian country.

A report released by police Friday provides a detailed account of the network headed by Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, who confessed earlier this month to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Police said the 12-page report on Tahir's Malaysian connections will be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna, Austria-based U.N. organization that oversees the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Malaysian authorities say they will cooperate if the IAEA seeks further action.

Tahir told Malaysian authorities he organized the shipment of two containers of centrifuge parts from Dubai to Iran aboard an Iranian merchant ship, the report says. Centrifuges are machines that can enrich uranium for weapons and other purposes.

``Payment for the two containers of centrifuge units, amounting to about $3 million,' was paid by an unnamed Iranian, the report said.

``The cash was brought in two briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by the Pakistani nuclear arms expert each time he visited Dubai,' the report says, identifying Khan as the arms expert.

Tahir said Khan told him ``a certain amount' of enriched uranium was flown to Libya from Pakistan on a Pakistani airliner in 2001, and a ``certain number' of centrifuges were flown to Libya direct from Pakistan in 2001-02, the report said.

Malaysian officials said earlier that Tahir broke no Malaysian laws, but they would keep him under surveillance.

Tahir, 44, is married to a Malaysian and has permanent residency status here.

Tahir vacated his apartment in one of Kuala Lumpur's most exclusive suburbs Wednesday after an Associated Press reporter sought him out for comment on allegations he was a key deputy in the smuggling network.

He is a former business associate of Kamaluddin Abdullah, the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who promised the police investigation would be conducted ``without fear or favor.'

A Malaysian company controlled by Kamaluddin, Scomi Precision Engineering, has acknowledged making 14 ``semifinished components' _ which may amount to thousands of parts--for a Dubai-based company, Gulf Technical Industries, under a contract negotiated by Tahir. They were seized in October while being shipped from Dubai to Libya.

Authorities say the parts were for centrifuges, but Scomi says it did not know what the parts were for.

The release of the police report comes as the international investigation into Tahir widened to Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh intelligence agency, the National Security Committee, is investigating allegations that an affiliate of a company linked to Tahir, SMB Computers, was dealing with highly enriched uranium, spokesman Kenzhebulat Beknazarov said.

SMB is a Dubai-based company established by Tahir and his brother that Bush alleged Tahir used as a front to organize the clandestine movement of parts for centrifuges.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar complained Friday that his nation has been unfairly singled out by Bush in calling for a crackdown on the international nuclear black market.

``Malaysia should not be dragged into the debate of being a country that is involved in the supply of components or otherwise for weapons of mass destruction,' Sayed Hamid said. ``We have no capability.'

He said most nuclear weapons came from Europe and the United States, ``but nothing has been talked about these people.'


AP-NY-02-20-04 0905EST

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