Uzbeks Said to Seize Pakistani Nuclear Cargo

[Thomas M Lashley <lashleyt@dteenergy.com>]

Uzbeks Said to Seize Pakistani Nuclear Cargo
By TIM WEINER
ASHINGTON, April 4 -- Border guards in the former Soviet republic of
Uzbekistan seized a radioactive cargo on an Iranian truck bound for
Pakistan last week, State Department officials said today.

The material is being tested by officials in neighboring Kazakhstan,
where it originated. American officials said they hoped to know as early
as Wednesday whether the seized material, found in 10 lead containers
about the size of a thick briefcase, could have been used to make a
weapon.

"We're not prepared to say it is or isn't" a senior State Department
official said tonight. "We just don't know. We're trying to find out."

In the past, the material seized in such cases has been of poor or
useless quality, in terms of producing a nuclear bomb. No weapons-grade
nuclear material has ever been smuggled successfully out of the former
Soviet Union, to the knowledge of United States intelligence services,
American officials said.

State Department officials described the case tonight as a successful
example of American efforts to halt international smuggling. "We have
been cooperating with a number of countries in the former Soviet Union
to improve their border controls, precisely for the purpose of
preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," said a
spokesman for the department, James P. Rubin.

The seizure was on Thursday, Mr. Rubin said, adding that that customs
officials turned over the truck and its cargo to Khazakstan, where it is
being tested.

The Uzbek officials had been trained and equipped by United States
Customs and Commerce Department officials, another State Department
official said. They were holding radiation detectors that they passed
around the truck and that found high levels of radioactivity in the
cargo, the second State Department official said.

The truck was stopped at the Gisht Kuprik customs post, a border
crossing 20 miles from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. The driver
said he was headed from Kazakhstan through Turkmenistan and Iran to
Pakistan, officials said. The stated destination was a company in
Quetta, a city near Pakistan's borders with Afghanistan and Iran.

The ultimate destination may have been Pakistan's nuclear weapons
complex. For decades, Pakistan has run a global ring for buying, copying
and stealing nuclear weapons technology. It has built up to 12 nuclear
warheads, and it tested two last year. But it needs many more to match
India's nuclear arsenal.




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