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Centrifuges sent to IAEA, says FO

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has sent centrifuge components to the International Atomic Energy Agency to assist its investigation of Iran’s nuclear programme, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told the Geo news channel on Thursday.

Jilani said that Pakistan had sent “old and discarded parts of centrifuges,” accompanied by Pakistani experts to the United Nations’ nuclear agency. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky in Vienna confirmed that the testing and analysis of Pakistani samples was underway.

Diplomats said that the IAEA had received centrifuge components for testing that could help agency experts determine whether the traces of highly enriched uranium came in on black market equipment originating from Pakistan or was a result of activities within Iran. Last year, the disgraced chief of Pakistan’s nuclear programme Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to supplying sensitive nuclear technology to Iran, as well as North Korea and Libya. Khan is accused of having operated an international black market in nuclear weapons technology. He was pardoned by President General Pervez Musharraf but now lives under house arrest.

Meanwhile in Bern, a report released by Swiss authorities claimed that AQ Khan’s clandestine network continued to operate last year even though its founder was under house arrest.

Khan’s network tried twice to buy Russian nuclear technology through a Dutch and a Swiss firm last year, said Switzerland’s annual report on national security. Swiss authorities helped foil the two attempts, which tried to export 120 tons of Russian aluminum tubes used for enriching uranium to Pakistani front companies for Khan Research Laboratories, the report said without naming the firms. The report said the Dutch firm tried to export one shipment of tubes to Pakistan through the Swiss company, but that authorities kept them from leaving Switzerland, reported AP.

Daily Times Monitor adds from Lahore: Pakistan has been very cooperative about nuclear proliferation issue and results of centrifuge parts provided by it will take some time, IAEA spokesperson Melissa Flemming told Geo news channel.

Flemming avoided answering whether a Pakistani was on the investigating team but said but praised Islamabad’s cooperation on the matter. She told the channel that if no link was found between Iran and Pakistan’s nuclear programmes it would be ominous because it would raise suspicions that Tehran was enriching uranium on its own without reporting to the agency. agencies

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