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The WaPo's Dafna Linzer and Craig Timberg have a remarkable story in today's Post about a key arrest this week in South Africa of a German supplier who was part of the AQ Khan nuclear black market:
Johan Andries Muller Meyer, a 53-year-old director of a manufacturing firm in the South African town of Vanderbiljpark, was arrested Thursday and charged Friday on three criminal counts of trafficking in some of the most sensitive nuclear equipment available.
Between November 2000 and November 2001, Meyer "unlawfully and deliberately had equipment that could be used to design, manufacture, develop, expose, and maintain the application of weapons of mass destruction," according to the South African charge sheet.
The charges provide a detailed list of key nuclear weapons components that Meyer's company, Trade Fin, was alleged to be involved with, including: gas centrifuges that enrich uranium for bombs; feed and piping systems that deliver the uranium inside the centrifuges; and a Spanish-made machine that produces the main centrifuge component -- high-precision steel rotor tubes where the enriching takes place.
After months of complex investigations, the International Atomic Energy Agency and partners in about 20 countries are getting closer to understanding the scope of the black market run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, according to government officials and experts involved with proliferation issues. The network is suspected of helping North Korea, Iran and Libya develop nuclear programs.
Conventional wisdom has it that Libya's decision to abandon its WMD program and reveal its suppliers led US, UK and IAEA investigators to move to shut down the AQ Khan nuclear network. But I wonder if it didn't go the other way round -- a break in the Khan network gave UK and US officials the evidence on Libya. Whatever the case, why the Bush administration has permitted Pakistan to completely obstruct US and IAEA investigation of Khan's full role is simply inexplicable. Especially considering Khan's assistance not only to Libya, but to the nuclear programs of ticking time bombs, North Korea and Iran.
Update: Matt Yglesias further questions why the Bush administration is apparently backing Pakistan's desire to keep its nuclear program off-limits to international inspectors.