Word: bomb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...centrifuge plant, which is now under construction near the country's capital, Islamabad. The onetime Almelo adviser managed to carry home critical information about the gas centrifuge process needed to build such a factory, thereby enabling Pakistan to produce its own enriched uranium and, eventually, its own nuclear bomb. Pakistan will be a full-fledged member of the world's nuclear club within two to five years...
Western intelligence experts believe that Pakistan has been trying for at least 15 years to develop a nuclear bomb, primarily to strengthen its defenses against neighboring India. When New Delhi tested its first atomic bomb in 1974, Islamabad stepped up its own efforts. The late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was then Pakistan's Prime Minister, warned that "we will eat leaves and grass, even go hungry" to build the country's own weapon. "There's a Hindu bomb, a Jewish bomb and a Christian bomb," Bhutto once wrote. "There must be an Islamic bomb...
...summer, a Labor Party M.P. asked British officials if they were aware that Pakistan was buying equipment suitable for building a gas centrifuge system. Eventually intelligence agents from several countries, including the U.S., pieced together the Pakistani buying spree and reached the conclusion that Islamabad was buying itself the bomb. Washington, which promptly cut off most of its aid to Pakistan, was caught by surprise: it had persuaded France last year not to sell a nuclear reprocessing plant to Pakistan for fear the country would use it to produce Plutonium for a bomb. It now turned out that Pakistan...
...paying for the gas centrifuge plant? Pakistan is a poor nation, and a plant like this one could cost at least $500 million. Many observers believe that Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who has long attempted to obtain an atomic bomb for his own country, is funding the Pakistani project. The Israelis suspect that Gaddafi may have struck some kind of deal with the Pakistanis, perhaps extracting a promise to sell Libya ground missiles fitted with nuclear warheads...
...part, Pakistan denies that it is building a nuclear bomb or that Gaddafi paid for a gas centrifuge plant. Officials do acknowledge that research is being carried out on uranium enrichment, but they insist the fuel will be used only in nuclear reactors. The Pakistanis, however, appear to be getting a bit protective about the project: when the French Ambassador to Pakistan and his First Secretary visited the ruins of an ancient fort 25 miles south of Islamabad last week, they seemed to have wandered too close to where the gas centrifuge factory is being built. They were set upon...