THE REAL PROLIFERATORS

...But American authorities are said to believe, because of nuclear weapons manufacturing and delivery capabilities that are known to be more advanced, and because of more compelling reasons for concealment, that the bomb was most probably Israeli...

...intelligence sources reported last week that, without IAEA detection, Argentina recently removed fifty kilograms of plutonium waste from its Atucha station—potentially enough for five atomic bombs...

...But the idea of such joint action with the Soviet Union is considered unthinkable in Washington...

...The wastes generated each year by a typical nuclear power reactor contain about 500 pounds of plutonium— 'What is needed is a program of disarmament' enough to produce twenty-five fission bombs...

...In the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union pledged, as a quid-pro-quo to the non-nuclear states for remaining non-nuclear, that they would take serious measures to disarm...

...Argentina is probably in a similar situation...

...There are two reasons for special concern about Pakistan: First, it is one of the most underdeveloped nations on Earth, but is managing to develop a nuclear capability entirely on its own, without the help of an industrialized nation...

...Two of the men in the boat unload their cargo, which seems to weigh between fifty and 100 pounds, stow it in the van, and in a few minutes their boat is headed back out to sea and toward a foreign port...

...Fred Ikle, who headed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Ford Administration, warned in a 1975 speech that Sidney Lens is a contributing editor of The Progressive...

...But why should the door be closed in our face...

...Similar thinking guides nations on the threshold elsewhere...

...Perhaps...

...In 1976 it was assumed that at least ten nations, in addition to the six already in the nuclear club, had or would have within a few years the wherewithal to fabricate nuclear arms—Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Israel, South Korea, Libya, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan...

...Any nation's acquisition of such a plant, with the intention of reprocessing its wastes for atomic bombs, is enough to terrify its neighbors...

...Though it submits to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is apparently not hobbled...

...What is going on in Pakistan today upsets those calculations...

...any other nations that gain access to atomic weapons would have to have the door opened by such highly industrialized states as the Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, Sweden, Japan, or Britain...

...That is the assumption on which the United States based its policies, and it felt reasonably certain it could contain proliferation by applying the requisite pressure on those nations—since all but Sweden were military allies...

...An hour later, an atomic bomb detonates, destroying much of Haifa and killing tens of thousands...

...And the Soviet Union had pointed to the United States as its excuse...

...By the time Washington and London bestirred themselves to deal with the purchase problem, Islamabad had spent about $100 million and acquired everything it needed...

...Certainly Iran was in that category when the Shah was in power—and perhaps it still is...

...The Pakistani threat adds a new dimension to the proliferation menace...

...The NonProliferation Treaty is, for all practical purposes, a dead letter...

...Cutting off the sale of enriched uranium would reduce still further the potential for new members of the nuclear club...

...Pakistan is believed to have rejected the offer, and in turn Qaddafi canceled a program to finance a French-Pakistani submarine...

...While Washington temporizes, the nuclear arms race is proliferating out of sight...

...While Washington temporizes, the...

...In April 1977, Israeli operatives are believed to have sabotaged a nuclear reactor that France was building for Iraq, out of fear that the Iraqi would acquire the capacity to make their own bombs...

...Ending such sales would, in itself, deny almost all developing countries the wherewithal for a nuclear bomb program...

...on the contrary, the confirmation a few months ago that Pakistan had built uranium-enrichment facilities at Kahuta, not far from its capital of Islamabad, may be the most worrisome proliferation since China exploded its first nuclear device in 1964...

...American sources predict that Pakistan is likely to test an atomic bomb within the next two years— perhaps sooner...

...When India exploded its device in 1974, K. Subrahmanyam, director of the Institute of Defense Studies in New Delhi, gave an angry reply to a question about India's reasons for taking this step: "You and I," he said, "are asked to accept the credibility of the structure of peace built on 7,000 strategic nuclear warheads...

...By then, however, Pakistan was embarked on a far more ambitious program—to produce enriched uranium at the plant in Kahuta, secretly being built under the direction of its own scientists—not foreigners...

...For thirty years it refused to sell such equipment, and in 1975, when France and Germany decided to break ranks—France to sell to Pakistan, Germany to Brazil in a vast project that would provide eight reactors, as well as uranium enrichment and reprocessing plants—the United States applied pressure to halt the trade...

...it expected them to restrain themselves...

...When the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto headed the government of Pakistan, he referred to it as "the Islamic Bomb...

...President Ford himself predicted that by 1985, forty nations (rather than the present admitted six) would have the capability— and the plutonium—to manufacture nuclear devices...

...Ikle noted, "We are not now prepared to defend our country against nuclear threats that could come from so many different sources...

...Still, Libya has a ten-year pact of cooperation with Islamabad, and Pakistan supplies it with military advisers and training personnel...

...The United States and its major allies had always known that once they began exporting reactors they would create the possibility of separating plutonium from the wastes by the technique called "reprocessing...

...If the United States and the Soviet Union joined hands to enforce non-proliferation, economic pressure alone would force recalcitrant nations to their knees...

...China had, of course, offered much the same rationale when it started along the nuclear path—that it needed the bombs because the Soviet Union had them...

...The Indian rebuttal was three-fold: First, that India had no intention of manufacturing nuclear bombs but was developing nuclear explosives for "peaceful" purposes—leveling mountains or digging canals...

...Almelo became the vehicle for the Islamic bomb...

...The United States has long been aware of the possibility...

...It was made of plutonium recycled at India's own Trombay reprocessing plant from the wastes of three power reactors and four research reactors...

...Satellite detection of an apparent atomic flash in the southern Indian Ocean—and the subsequent identification of radioactive fallout in New Zealand—gave rise to that question last October...

...The last one to arrive tries to close the door...

...On May 18, 1974, India conducted an underground explosion of a twelve-kiloton nuclear device (approximately equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb...

...A third technique, also cheaper and simpler, called the "centrifuge process," was in use at the British-German-Dutch enrichment plant at Almelo, Holland...

...American sources do not rule out the possibility that Qaddafi is playing—or will play—a role in Pakistan's nuclear efforts...

...the credibility of deterrence which means a non-stop arms race...

...There is no doubt that American Presidents have been genuinely concerned about proliferation, but they are caught in a web of their own making: They insist on buttressing General Electric, Westing-house, Babcock and Wilcox, and the rest of the nuclear industry, helping it in one way or another to sell hundreds of power reactors abroad...

...If America can do it, he was asking, why can't we...

...Waiting on shore is another young man in a stolen Israeli police van...

...Tomorrow we will be able to buy an atom bomb and all its parts...

...Enriched uranium, like plutonium, is the stuff out of which nuclear warheads are made, but given a choice between fabricating a bomb from enriched uranium or plutonium derived from reactor waste, which contains certain impurities, scientists would certainly choose the enriched uranium...

...Second, its bomb may be made available to other Islamic states—and perhaps to the Palestine Liberation Organization...

...Time magazine, in its issue of April 12, 1976, reported on the basis of CIA leaks that "Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal of thirteen atomic bombs, assembled, stored, and ready to be dropped on enemy forces from specially equipped Kfir and Phantom fighters or Jericho missiles...

...The nuclear monopoly is about to be broken," he has said...

...If we [Argentina] come to be seventh, we would of course like to see no more than seven...

...In such circumstances, the non-nuclear states merely scoff at attempts to keep them out of the nuclear club...

...Bhutto decided that Pakistan needed its own nuclear capability in 1973, when it became clear that India had such a program under way...

...Until recently, the United States was sure that the gaseous diffusion process by which uranium was enriched at three American facilities (Oak Ridge, Tennessee...

...Sixteen others were not far behind...

...that more and more nations might begin to acquire their own nuclear bombs...

...The United States, which for decades has been exporting most of the Western world's reactors—the means by which plutonium can become available—has nonetheless worked fiercely to prevent the buying nations from acquiring reprocessing equipment...

...That is only natural...

...The fourth Palestinian, dressed in an Israeli police uniform—stolen like the van—drives carefully to the center of town, parks the van, picks up his own automobile, and drives toward Tel Aviv...

...Within the hour the Israeli cabinet, meeting in Jerusalem, feverishly debates whether to send bombers with nuclear weapons toward Karachi, Beirut...

...When Senator Abraham Ribicoff suggested it to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger a few years ago, he received a blistering reply: "We are not prepared to cooperate with the Soviet Union against our allies...

...The Israeli weapons are said to have a twenty-kiloton yield—about 50 per cent more than the 1945 Hiroshima bomb which killed 142,000 people...

...arms race is proliferating...

...A Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadar Khan, was employed there until 1975, and he provided the blueprints and data that enabled Pakistan to purchase the equipment for an enrichment plant...

...According to a Newsweek story of July 7,1975, "U.S...

...No one can be sure whether other nations are embarked on programs of their own, building enrichment plants or, more probably, small reprocessing plants...

...Pakistani in Bombay...

...A few years ago, however, it became apparent that Germany had developed a less complicated and less costly process usually referred to as the Becker nozzle, and was sharing that technology with South Africa...

...Others have taken the same position...

...the credibility of a Non-Proliferation Treaty since the signing of which nuclear weapons have quadrupled in number...

...Libya, according to Pakistani officials, offered to finance the French reprocessing plant if it were guaranteed access to some of the plutonium that resulted from the deal...

...Far-fetched...

...But in two years or even sooner, this scenario could be played out in a dozen variations—Libyan guerrillas planting A-bombs in Alexandria...

...second, that even if India intended to build bombs, the United States had no grounds for complaint, since it had promised in the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to negotiate "seriously" with the Russians for disarmament, but had failed to do so and had, in fact, vastly increased its nuclear arsenal, and third, that India was entitled to have nuclear bombs because China had them...

...Some of the enriched uranium for these bombs is believed to have been hijacked from France, Britain, and West Germany in 1968 and 1969 (probably with the collusion of those governments), and the rest was apparently bought (illegally) from a nuclear materials processing plant at Apollo, Pennsylvania...

...Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky), and one each in the Soviet Union, China, Britain, and France, was far beyond the technological capability of such less-industrialized nations as Pakistan...

...But Israel, Japan, and Germany have extremely sophisticated economies...

...But for reasons that defy comprehension, Washington did not expect weaker nations to buy or develop such technology...

...It was, therefore, quite consistent for Bhutto to pursue nuclear weaponry for his own beleaguered country— especially after its eastern sector, now Bangladesh, was sheared away with the connivance of India...

...The United States has known all along that such nations as Germany and Japan could join the nuclear club whenever they wanted, relying entirely on their own technology and resources...

...The location of the flash off the southern coast of Africa fueled speculation that the explosion, if that is what it was, was probably touched off by South Africa, which is known to be developing a nuclear weapons program...

...in addition to another 7,000 tactical nuclear weapons capable of incinerating all of us on this globe many times over...

...The superpowers have not kept that promise...

...The United States and the Soviets can still put the lid on nuclear proliferation if they agree to disarm and form an "atomic partnership" of the kind suggested by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in 1946...

...Some years ago, we could hardly procure a fighter squadron...

...The United States and the Soviets can still put the lid on____' tal of 274 power reactors, each with the implicit potential of diverting nuclear material to bomb production...

...These would have given him the potential of producing 800 to 1,000 atomic weapons a year— probably enough to destroy any nation on earth...

...Libya's militant leader, Muam-mar Qaddafi, has also long been yearning for nuclear weaponry...

...Canada, which had supplied some of the facilities, accused the Indians of a breach of faith: It was never intended that India would use the resources and know-how offered by Canada to become the sixth member of the nuclear club, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China...

...Behind barbed wire and guarded gates," reported The Washington Post on February 27,1977, "teams of Western-trained scientists are quietly but relentlessly nudging Taiwan into the nuclear arena...

...And there the matter stands...

...Bernard Feld, editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, judges that by the end of the century developing nations will be able to produce 30,000 nuclear warheads a year— about what the United States has acquired in three decades...

...there was an "imminent threat...

...on the contrary, they have escalated their nuclear programs, unrestrained by the provisions of SALT I or SALT II...

...After two-and-a-half years of such threats by the Ford and Carter Administrations, the reprocessing plant deal was canceled by France in August 1978...

...Some may already have succeeded in doing so...

...What made this incident so ominous was that Argentina was then feverishly seeking to acquire a reprocessing plant...

...Iranians in Baghdad...

...Weaker nations can be dissuaded from making their own bombs by collective action of the superpowers—action in which they show by example that they truly mean to have a disarmed world and will collaborate to enforce that decision...

...The Shah, who had illusions of reconstituting the Persian Empire, hoped to buy twenty to twenty-five reactors by 1985...

...They would like to remain six...

...An Argentine journalist, Mariana Grondona, expressed the psychology of proliferation aptly in a December 18, 1974, article for La Opinion: "Now with India the atomic powers are six in number...

...Baghdad, Teheran, Damascus—fully aware that this could be the beginning of World War III...

...Similar urgent meetings are under way in Washington, Moscow, and other world capitals...

...Feld wonders whether we haven't "already passed the point of no return...

...Bhutto made a deal with France in March 1976 to buy a reprocessing plant...

...Those twenty-six governments were operating or building a toA new member...

...Still, the danger of proliferation does not abate...

...Taiwanese Premier Chiang Ching-kuo admitted his government "has the capability of developing nuclear arms," and it is well known that the Chung Shan Institute has programs for projectile guidance systems, missile design, rocket fuels, and nuclear warhead research...

...The West responded angrily to India's feat...

...In the case of France's $150 million reprocessing plant for Pakistan, Washington threatened to cut off economic and military aid to Islamabad and hinted to Paris that if France did not go along with American policy, it would be deprived of the enriched uranium to operate its own power reactors...

...Israel has the technology and, though it is not usually counted as a member of the nuclear club, it almost certainly is...

...Ensconced in the Taiwan institute is a forty-megawatt Canadian-supplied research reactor closely resembling the reactor that was instrumental in India's 1974 development of its first nuclear device...

...What is needed most of all, however, is a program for disarmament...

...Is there now a seventh member of the nuclear weapons club...

...In the face of this frightening prospect, the Carter Administration—like the Ford and Nixon Administrations before it—does little more than helpless hand-wringing...