http://www.wsj.com

Libya Was Far From Building Nuclear Bomb; Program Was Haphazard, But Shows How Technology Was Bought Off-the-Shelf

David Crawford. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Feb 23, 2004. pg. A.14


VIENNA -- Libya's acquisition of nuclear-weapons technology was so haphazard and incomplete that inspectors and senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency working to understand the black market in nuclear materiel believe the nation was far from building an actual nuclear weapon.

There are several possible explanations for why the program was so haphazard. For one, U.S. officials point out, purchasing on the nuclear black market means taking what is available, when it is available. For another, several weapons inspectors and Western diplomats at the IAEA speculate, Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi's procurement of nuclear secrets from an international network headed by the now-disgraced father of Pakistan's atomic bomb may have been motivated as much by the desire to develop a nuclear bargaining chip as by the drive to build a bomb.

Whatever the case, a detailed look at Libya's nuclear program suggests a worrisome shift in the underground game of nuclear proliferation. Instead of painstakingly developing and acquiring the science and ingredients to make a nuclear bomb over a period of years -- a course Libya abandoned as too complex in the mid-1980s -- the nation used off-the-shelf components to quickly acquire certain nuclear capabilities.

The plans and equipment acquired by Libya indicate that it was able to simply buy nuclear technology without actually knowing how it worked. "Libya could just build according to plans," said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, who has participated in IAEA inspections in Iraq.

To be sure, experts and inspectors point out that the road to nuclear capability remains difficult, and that Libya's program was far from complete.

Nuclear investigators in Tripoli in December, two months after the seizure of five containers of centrifuges (a crucial component in the enrichment of uranium) aboard a German-owned ship bound for Tripoli, determined that many key elements required to assemble a weapon were missing. Libya hadn't begun the difficult work on the miles of tubing necessary to connect thousands of centrifuges. Nor had it acquired the technology and equipment needed to operate an enrichment plant.

IAEA officials say the bomb designs they found in Libya posed an additional problem for Libyan technicians because the Chinese design supplied by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was for warheads too large to fit on the missiles in Mr. Gadhafi's arsenal.

Further, Libya hadn't hired the personnel necessary to carry out a full-blown weapons program. Although a handful of Libyan staff had gone to Spain for training, according to a Malaysian investigation report, IAEA inspectors say Libya had fewer than 30 people in total assigned to its nuclear program. They say, by contrast, Iran has hundreds of technicians working on its nuclear program.

The Libyan inquiry is part of building a picture of the network assembled by Pakistan's Dr. Khan, who this month confessed to selling nuclear technology and equipment to Libya, Iran and North Korea and was quickly pardoned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The IAEA has been investigating Dr. Khan since 1995, when a memo found in Iraq disclosed an offer by Dr. Khan to assist Baghdad in acquiring nuclear weapons.

On Friday, investigators in Malaysia said Libya also bought enriched uranium hexafluoride, an ingredient for starting a nuclear-fuel program, from Pakistan in 2001. The allegation was made in a statement to Malaysian investigators by Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman based in Dubai who has been identified as a key partner of Dr. Khan's.

An IAEA report on Libya's nuclear-weapons program distributed to members of the IAEA governing board and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal confirms that Libya in February 2001 bought 1.7 tons of low enriched uranium hexafluoride containing about 1% uranium-235.

The investigators said the amount of uranium on hand in Libya would have been enough to test centrifuges and, in theory, to build a bomb. But Libya claimed it never actually tried to refine the recently acquired uranium, according to the IAEA report.

Several inspectors say their evaluation of the Libyan nuclear program indicates that Mr. Gadhafi wasn't going forward with an actual nuclear weapon and may primarily have been seeking a bargaining chip with the West. One Western diplomat even says that it was Libya itself that provided the tip that led to the October seizure of the shipment of centrifuges, although several officials in Washington deny that the Libyans played any role in the seizure of the shipment.

Mr. Gadhafi has a history of irrational behavior, which makes it difficult to read his intentions. He has been moving gradually toward rapprochement with the West, beginning in 1999 with his decision to turn over two suspects in the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

"Mr. Gadhafi discovered this didn't get him what he wanted: recognition and acceptance," said the Western diplomat.