Libya, Iran On Nuke Customer List

Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold nuclear enrichment equipment to Iran and Pakistani uranium was shipped to Libya for its nuclear program, police said Friday, citing the alleged financier of an international trafficking network.

Buhary Syed Abu Tahir told Malaysian police that the scientist 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, according to police.

Tahir is in Malaysia and has been questioned by local authorities in connection with his activities on Khan's behalf in this Southeast Asian country. The police released a report of the investigation Friday.

The report provides the first official and detailed account from an insider 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.

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.

"Payment for the two containers of centrifuge units, amounting to about US$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," says the report, which identifies the arms expert as Khan.

Tahir said Khan told him that "a certain amount" of enriched uranium was flown to Libya from Pakistan on a Pakistani airliner in 2001, and that a "certain number" of centrifuges - sophisticated machines that can be used to enrich uranium for weapons and other purposes - were flown to Libya direct from Pakistan in 2001-02, the report said.

Malaysian officials said earlier that they don't plan to arrest Tahir because it doesn't appear he broke any Malaysian laws, but that they were keeping him under surveillance.

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

U.S. President George 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.

Police said the 12-page report on Tahir's Malaysian connections will be handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. organization that oversees the international nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

Malaysian authorities have said they would cooperate if the nuclear watchdog agency seeks further action and are considering whether to confiscate Tahir's passport.

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

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 last October in a shipment en route from Dubai to Libya.

Authorities say the parts were for centrifuges. 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 which President 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 Malaysia had been unfairly singled out by President 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 told reporters. "We have no capability."

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

"I think there should be a full disclosure of who has been supplying what," Syed Hamid said.

By Rohan Sullivan