By MATT KELLEY The Associated Press
Friday, February 27, 2004; 2:19 PM
WASHINGTON - Pakistan warned the United States 14 years ago that it might give nuclear technology to Iran, but the administration of President Bush's father did little to follow up, former Pentagon officials say.
Word of the 1990 threat from Pakistan's top general apparently was not passed along to the Clinton administration when it took office three years later, according to interviews by The Associated Press.
One of Pakistan's top nuclear scientists admitted last month that he sold nuclear technology to Iran, as well as North Korea and Libya - all nations on the U.S. list of terrorism sponsors. President Bush said the underground nuclear network was exposed by U.S. and British intelligence agencies' work over the past few years.
But former government arms control officials and declassified documents show the United States knew about Pakistan's nuclear procurement network since 1983 and suspected the transfers to Iran since the mid-1980s. The United States had hints of the transfers to North Korea in the mid-1990s, officials say.
The clearest evidence of the Iran link came in January 1990, when Pakistan's army chief of staff conveyed his threat to arm Iran to a top Pentagon official. Henry S. Rowen, at the time an assistant defense secretary, said Pakistani Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg issued the warning in a face-to-face meeting in Pakistan.
"Beg said something like, 'If we don't get adequate support from the U.S., then we may be forced to share nuclear technology with Iran,'" said Rowen, now a professor at Stanford University.
Beg has acknowledged Iran approached him seeking nuclear assistance that year and he publicly advocated military cooperation between Pakistan and Iran to counter U.S. power in the region. Beg said he never authorized nuclear transfers to Iran or made threats to the United States.
"I have said many times it's all pure lies," Beg said in a telephone interview. "Am I a fool, to tell the U.S. what to do or what not to do?"
In recent weeks, evidence has emerged that Pakistani nuclear aid to Iran began in the mid-1980s but accelerated after 1990 and included transfer of some of Pakistan's most advanced nuclear technology.
The former Pentagon officials' accounts suggest the United States may have missed an early opportunity to thwart some of those transfers.
