Word: atomically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...proliferation. For almost 16 years, the country's strongman, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has been supporting international terrorism and devising schemes to worry the West. Were a nuclear weapon or two to fall into his hands, his capacity for troublemaking would increase intolerably. In 1981 Gaddafi told TIME that the atom bomb was "a means of terrorizing humanity, and we are against the manufacture and acquisition of nuclear weapons." A few days later he reportedly told his top advisers that he planned to channel a substantial amount of Libya's financial resources into obtaining a nuclear weapon...
Though Libya is nowhere near achieving that goal, it has not been for lack of trying. Even before he signed the nonproliferation treaty in 1975, Gaddafi began hatching proposals. In 1970 he sent a top aide, Abdul Salam Jalloud, to Peking in an attempt to buy an atom bomb. China turned him down. Beginning in 1973 the colonel helped bankroll part of Pakistan's bombmaking effort, and even before he was rebuffed several years later by President Mohammed Zia ul- Haq, he had started to make overtures to Pakistan's archenemy, India. When New Delhi restricted the extent of nuclear...
...dealings and espionage coups that have left trails of suspicion leading inexorably back to Kahuta. All those James Bond operations have conveyed the same unsettling message: even though the government of President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq firmly denies it, Pakistan appears to be developing the capacity to build an atom bomb...
...Moscow on an official visit last week, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi charged that Pakistan's development of an atom bomb was "very close" to fruition. Earlier this month, the Indian leader had affirmed that such an achievement by his country's chief regional rival "will completely change the present military balance on the subcontinent. At no cost will we allow our integrity and security to be compromised." In 1974, India shocked the world with a "peaceful" underground nuclear explosion in the Rajasthan Des- ert; Gandhi's pronouncements hold out the threat that India might resume testing, perhaps even begin...
...sense." He cautions, however, that the obstacles to developing an actual weapon are "fantastic," and repeated last week his view that SDI threatens "a big new escalation" in the arms race. For good measure, he took a swipe at Edward Teller, his colleague from the World War II atom-bomb project who is now a promoter of Star Wars in general and X-ray lasers in particular. Teller, said Bethe, was the scientist "who brought us the H-bomb with the statement that it will...