PROJECT BUTTER FACTORY Henk Slebos and the A.Q. Khan nuclear network Briefing 2007/01 Frank Slijper Henk Slebos and the A.Q. Khan nuclear network I 1 PROJECT BUTTER FACTORY Henk Slebos and the A.Q. Khan nuclear network Frank Slijper Transnational Institute in association with Campagne tegen Wapenhandel Authors Frank Slijper Zia Mian Editors Imre Szucs,OscarReyes Design Zlatan Peric Cover image TelstarLogistics Printing Drukkerij RaddraaierB.V. Contact Transnational Institute De Wittenstraat 25 PO Box 14656 1001 LD Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel: +31-20-6626608 Fax: +31-20-6757176 [email protected] www.tni.org ISSN 1871-3408 The written contents of this booklet may be quoted orreproduced, provided that the source of information is acknowledged. TNI would like to receive a copy of the document in whichthis booklet is quoted. You can stay informed of TNI publications and activities by subscribing to TNI’s fortnightly email newsletter. Send your request to [email protected] Amsterdam, September2007 CONTENTS Foreword by Zia Mian 7 Project Butter Factory 11 Conclusion and recommendations 32 Appendix I Timeline 37 Notes 39 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Frank Slijper works at the Dutch Campaign against Arms Trade (Campagne tegen Wapenhandel) and has been a researcher and campaigner on arms trade issues for the past fifteen years. He graduated in 1993 as an economist (international econom- ic relations), specialising in Dutch military procurement and the offset policies implemented to enhance the defence industry. He has written and published exten- sively on Dutch arms exports and policy ever since. His recent publications include The Emerging EU Military-Industrial Complex (TNI, 2005), the co-authored European Export Credit Agencies and the financing of arms trade (ENAAT, 2007); and the co-authored A.Q. Khan, Urenco and the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology (Greenpeace, 2004). For more on the Dutch Campaign Against Arms FOREWORD abroad – first in West Berlin, then in the Zia Mian Netherlands, finally receiving his PhD in metallurgy in Belgium. He was not to return and settle in Pakistan until 1975. But within a decade, this itinerant engineer, who had spent more time living in India and Europe In late May 1998, the mountains in than Pakistan, became a central figure in that Balochistan, Pakistan’s remote and desolate country’s nuclear weapons programme, and western province, shook and turned white soon afterwards a key player in the nuclear from the force of a nuclear explosion. It was efforts of several others. Pakistan’s first nuclear test, the culmination of a nearly three decade long effort to match Project Butter Factory builds on the earlier neighbouring India as a nuclear armed state. report A.Q. Khan, Urenco and the India, Pakistan’s neighbour, had tested its Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Technology weapons a few weeks earlier; its first test had (Greenpeace, 2004) to tell an important part been twenty four years earlier. of A. Q. Khan’s story, in particular how he was able to set up a uranium enrichment pro- In both countries, the scientists that built the gramme that produced highly enriched ura- bomb were lauded as heroes. None more so nium for making nuclear weapons, and how than Abdul Qadeer Khan, dubbed by many as he tried to help other countries do the same. the “father of the Pakistani bomb”. He was It details how his path to becoming a ‘nation- already a national figure. For over a decade, al hero’ relied on personal relationships, espe- he had been in the public eye, seen on televi- cially with his college friend Henk Slebos, sion and in the press receiving the highest and how they benefited from the drive for national honours and shaking hands with profit in perhaps a thousand different compa- successive Presidents and Prime Ministers. nies and corporations, and were not stopped One Prime Minister of Pakistan wrote about because of competing political and bureau- him as “a national hero” who had given “a cracatic self-interests at work in many coun- sense of pride to our nation”. tries. It also reveals how those involved justi- fy what they do by a belief in nuclear weapons A.Q. Khan was an unlikely ‘national hero’ for as an acceptable basis for national security. Pakistan. He was born in 1936, in Bhopal, India. Unlike millions of Indian muslims, he The multi-national origin of the Pakistani did not move to Pakistan when the country bomb should come as no surprise. It may that was created as a majority muslim state by a no country has ever build a nuclear weapon partition of India that uprooted millions and totally by itself. The Manhattan Project, the claimed countless lives. But as a boy in India, United States’ successful World War II effort he developed a passionate hatred for India to make the first atomic bomb, was an incred- and for Hindus that was to shape his life. ibly international enterprise. It brought together scientists from many countries, who Khan eventually moved to Pakistan in 1952. shared their nuclear knowledge, and relied on But he did not stay. He left in 1961 to study the support of many governments. Henk Slebos and the A.Q. Khan nuclear network I 7 The Manhattan Project was both the first and North Korea, and offered to help Iraq instance of successful nuclear proliferation and perhaps others. Like his friend and part- and the source of the second. Klaus Fuchs, a ner, Henk Slebos, A.Q. Khan has not paid a German physicist who fled the Nazis and high price for spreading nuclear technology. moved to Britain, and then was sent (along After Pakistan was officially confronted with with many others) to join the US bomb pro- information about his activities, and his sub- gramme, secretly passed nuclear weapons sequent televised public confession, taking all design information to the Soviet Union. responsibility for his activities, in 2004 Fuchs justified his actions by citing the need A.Q.Khan was confined to one of his palatial to help Russia fight the Nazis and that Russia homes in Islamabad. In July 20007, some had to be be prepared to confront other great restrictions were lifted. He is now allowed to powers which might be armed with nuclaer entertain friends and to travel to see his rela- weapons in future. tives. All subsequent nuclear weapons programs, to Today, there are nine states armed with some degree, also received help from outside. nuclear weapons. Mohamed el-Baradei, The United States helped Britain and then Director-General of the International Atomic France. Russia helped China and North Energy Agency, has warned that there are Korea. France and Britain helped Israel. India another 20 or 30 “virtual nuclear weapons built its nuclear programme on the basis of states” that have the capacity to develop the over 1,000 scientists trained in nuclear nuclear weapons in a very short time span. science and engineering in the United States, For these countries, and others less well pre- as part of the Atoms for Peace Programme. pared, it may take a threat from an existing India’s first reactor was a British design and nuclear-armed state, a change in leadership, a the plutonium it used in its first bomb was new found desire for national power and made in a Canadian supplied research reac- prestige, a resourceful scientist or unexpected tor. access to technology to tip the balance. For its part, over a hundred Pakistani scien- Why has it come to this? Part of the reason is tists were trained in the US as part of Atoms that all states who have or seek nuclear of Peace. One of them went on to become the weapons share a common disregard for Chairman of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy democracy and their own people — every Commission and was responsible for the state that has developed nuclear weapons has nuclear weapons programme at the time A.Q. done so in secret from its people. Few people Khan (who was not part of this programme) know that the very first resolution passed by returned from the Netherlands and set up the United Nations General Assembly was a call Kahuta uranium enrichment facility. More for plans “for the elimination from national direct help has come from China. armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass In turn, Pakistan has helped those it chose to destruction.” Even fewer know that in 1961 for whatever reason. A.Q. Khan has been the UN General Assembly declared that “any complicit in the nuclear efforts in Iran, Libya state using nuclear and thermo-nuclear 8 I Project butter factory weapons is to be considered as violating the useful recommendations. But it recognises, Charter of the United Nations, as acting con- wisely, that if we are to do more than just slow trary to the laws of humanity and as commit- down the effort by states to become nuclear ting a crime against mankind and civilisa- armed, we need to move purposefully tion”. towards ending the nuclear age. Project Butter Factory tries to draw some larg- er lessons from the story of A.Q. Khan, Henk Zia Mian Slebos, and the failed international effort to Princeton, July 2007 control nuclear proliferation. It makes some Henk Slebos and the A.Q. Khan nuclear network I 9 10 I Project butter factory PROJECT BUTTER FACTORY group of businessmen and nuclear experts, who for years had been able to sell nuclear technology to at least Iran, North Korea and Libya. Which other countries have been sup- The October 2003 seizure of a German- plied in some way remains unclear.