AP: Kazakhstan Probes Nuclear Black Market

ALMATY, Kazakhstan - Kazakhstan has opened an investigation into the nuclear black market that helped Iran, Libya and North Korea, exploring suspected ties in the country that housed much of the Soviet Union's atomic arsenal, officials told The Associated Press.

Kazakhstan's intelligence agency is examining the Almaty office of a Dubai company linked by President Bush to the market headed by the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, the officials said.

The black market's potential connection to Kazakhstan - which served as a nuclear testing ground until it disarmed after its 1991 independence - has raised concern about the proliferation of remnants of the Soviet weapons program. Kazakh officials strongly deny any highly enriched uranium - the form used in weapons - has leaked out of the country.

Bush accused Sri Lankan businessman Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir of brokering black-market deals for nuclear technology using his Dubai-based company SMB Computers as a front. That firm also has an office in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty.

The Kazakh intelligence agency, the National Security Committee, is investigating allegations that SMB Computers' affiliate was dealing with highly enriched uranium, spokesman Kenzhebulat Beknazarov said Thursday.

SMB Computers' office in Almaty was closed Thursday.

According to a receptionist in the building where the company rents a room, the only person who staffed the office hasn't shown up there for a week. The receptionist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had been planning to "wrap up business" and move out.

The Dubai headquarters of SMB identified the head of its Almaty office as Shaul Hameed, but said they didn't have any further contact details for him. A receptionist there, who didn't give her name, said "our company has nothing to do with this," regarding allegations of nuclear smuggling.

Bush named SMB Computers' owner Tahir as a key link in a clandestine network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program who has confessed to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Tahir was described as the network's chief financial officer, money launderer and shipping agent - using the firm as a cover to ship parts for centrifuges, used to enrich uranium.

Kazakhstan transferred all its Soviet nuclear warheads to Russia by April 1995, and destroyed its nuclear testing infrastructure at the major Semipalatinsk weapons test site by July 2000. About 1,320 pounds of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium was removed to the United States from the Ulba Metallurgy Plant in 1994.

Yet the Central Asian nation still holds weapons-grade nuclear material, including 3.3 tons of plutonium at a mothballed breeder reactor in the country's west, and small amounts of highly enriched uranium at two nuclear research institutes, according to the Web site of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a U.S.-based foundation.

Still, Kazakh nuclear officials denied the chance of any weapons-grade uranium leaks.

"It is impossible to illegally take any uranium out of Kazakhstan," said Shinar Zhanibekova, spokeswoman for Kazakhstan's national atomic energy company, KazAtomProm.

The Atomic Energy Committee, which grants licenses for the export of nuclear materials, said it had never done any business with SMB Computers and never granted it a license.

Kazakhstan has 30 percent of the world's uranium reserves and is the fourth biggest uranium producer, according to KazAtomProm.

Zhanibekova said the country now produces only low-enriched uranium tablets for nuclear power plants, which require a maximum 3 percent enrichment. Weapons-grade uranium has to be enriched to at least 98 percent.

She said all uranium exports from the country were monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and tightly controlled by Kazakh nuclear and security agencies. All shipments are accompanied by armed guards, Zhanibekova said.

A Europe-based Western diplomat working on issues of nuclear proliferation questioned the reliability of Kazakh safeguards for its nuclear assets.

"Nobody can pretend that everything is perfectly secure," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. However, he had no further information on SMB Computers' possible activities in Kazakhstan.

Beknazarov, the intelligence agency spokesman, said there had never been leaks of highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan.

However, huge amounts of unguarded nuclear waste - material that could potentially be used by terrorists to create a "dirty bomb," combining conventional explosives with radioactive materials - are scattered around the country and are unguarded.