Date

Jun 17, 1982

Description

The Reagan administration gave Pakistan some slack, but it continued the campaign of demarches, begun under Jimmy Carter, to try to prevent the export of sensitive nuclear technology to Pakistan, among others. (See EBB "Demarches and Non-Papers") As before, Pakistan was a special target of concern, but these summaries of State Department telegrams, some in the sensitive intelligence-related "Roger" channel, show that Washington was also trying to prevent sales of nuclear-related technology to a host of countries: Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Iraq, Israel, Korea, Libya, Romania, South Africa, and Syria. For example, cable traffic on Syria showed concern about Damascus's interest in acquiring a research reactor, while messages on Libya show U.S. government efforts to discourage Belgian sale of a plant to produce uranium tetraflouride (the precursor to uranium hexaflouride, used for uranium enrichment).

The name A. Q. Khan was not mentioned in these cables, but his fingerprint showed up, for example, in the attempted purchases of electrical inverters (used for gas centrifuges). These attempts were probably by the Khan network. But the group of Pakistani agents seeking to purchase nuclear-related technology was broaderthan Khan's. For example, the nuclear reprocessing technology program was directed by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission chief Munir Ahmad Khan, who had a procurement network in Europe directedby S.A. Butt. The cable summaries for Pakistan showed a number of attempted and completed purchases by Pakistani agents from suppliers in a variety of countries, including Belgium, Finland, Japan, Sweden, andTurkey. Besides the inverters, agents were seeking such items as fabricated shapes" (metal hemispheres for producing nuclear explosive devices), coaxial cables, fuel chopping machines(to help reprocess plutonium), nuclear power plants, and "flash X-ray units"(diagnostic instrument used in tests of neutron initiators for nuclear weapons).[8] Suggesting that Pakistan was starting to cross the line into producing a nuclear weapon, these efforts raised alarm bells in Washington. [Updated 4 May 2012. Thanks to Mansoor Ahmed for information]

Source

State Department FOIA release

Document published in following posting(s):

New Documents Spotlight Reagan-era Tensions over Pakistani Nuclear Program

Apr 27, 2012

Discoveries and Demarches. Terry Jones, Office of Nonproliferation and Export Policy, Department of State, to J. Devine et al., enclosing summaries of State Department cable traffic during 1981-1982 relating to demarches on attempted purchase of sensitive nuclear-related products, 17 June 1982