Origin of Pakistani nuclear Program
PAEC, which traces its origin to 1954, was founded to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy, inspired and assisted by the US `Atoms for Peace’ program. Pakistan’s nuclear programme began for purely peaceful purposes. Pakistan produced two power reactors to generate electricity is currently constructing a third and is planning a fourth.
All are, or will be, safeguarded against military diversion by the international Atomic energy Agency (IAEA) under Pakistan’s facility – specific INFCIRC/66 safeguards agreement.
Motive Behind Pakistani Nuclear Weapons
Since becoming foreign minister in 1963, Z.A. Bhutto had already began lobbying in earnest to harness nuclear technology for weapons purposes. After the Chinese nuclear test in 1964, he concluded that India would go nuclear and that Pakistan would have to follow suit. He famously declared in a newspaper interview in 1965 that if India developed nuclear weapons, `Pakistan will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry’ in order to develop a programme of its own.
After India’s test on 18 May 1974 of what it called a peaceful nuclear device’, a cabinet meeting the following month confirmed the official launch of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme, which was until then a `hedging’ option. Z.A Bhutto was determined to level the playing field and to demonstrate Pakistan’s technological capabilities. In the 1970s Pakistan’s nuclear programme became infused with military objectives. With the exception of the safeguarded reactors, the civilian and military programmes became intertwined. It is difficult to separate the history of one from the other, with the civilian programme falling victim to foreign controls imposed on nuclear exports to Pakistan over concerns about possible diversion to military use.
According to a quasi-official report, `Pakistan’s nuclear capability is solely for the purpose of deterrence of aggression and defense of sovereignty.’ 81 Major General Muhammad Ali Durrani, `Pakistan’s Strategic thinking and the role of Nuclear weapons’, cooperative Monitoring Center Occasional paper, SAND 2004 3375P, Sandia National Laboratories, July 2004, P 23, http:/www.cmc.sandia.gov/links/-cmc-papers/sand2004-3375p.pdf.
Training of Pakistani Nuclear Scientists p. 29.
It should also be noted that many Pakistani scientists and engineers gained crucial knowledge about the enrichment process through education, training and internships in European firms (sometimes under the aegis of UNESCO programmes). A.Q Khan was the best known of these, but certainly not the only one. Tens of scientists were trained in Europe, in particular in Belgium and Germany.
Usman Shabbir, remembering unsung Heroes: Munir Ahmed Khan, Defense Journal, may 2004; Jack Boureston, “Assessing Pakistan’s Nuclear reprocessing Capabilities’ Janes Intelligence review, October 2006.
Pakistan’s Nuclear Policy
After the 1998 tests, Pakistan proceeded to a full scope nuclear review, involving the national Defence College, to develop and test ideas and concepts. In late 1998, doctrine and organization began to be redesigned. According to one source, the country adopted a three-point nuclear policy in early 2001: Islamabad would not be the first to resume nuclear testing, would not engage in a nuclear arms race with any country, and would not export nuclear technology.84 another source reports that a new defecne policy was adopted in March 2004. This policy reportedly intended to `further strengthen the process of institutionalization of control of strategic assets’ and `turn all policies and decisions from an invisible secrecy into a solid documentary form following the recent nuclear proliferation scandal.
Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister, publicly announced a principle of `minimum credible deterrence’ in May 1999. Pakistan’s declared nuclear policy today is `to deter all forms of external aggression that can endanger our national security’ by maintaining a minimum credible deterrence. “Pakistan will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states, and vows that it is against an open-ended arms race in south Asian. The overarching principles are said to be `restraint’ and responsibility. As noted above, Pakistan insists that it rejects the logic of parity; that is, it does not seek an arsenal equivalent to that of India. More recently -the Pakistani government has been suing the expression `minimum defensive deterrence’.87 this semantic change (form `credible’ to `defensive’O may be a way for
Pakistan to differentiate its concept from India’s stated policy of the same name. Pakistan Established Three-Point Nuclear Doctrine”, Jang. 19 March 2001 (via BBC worldwide Monitoring) Sohail Abdul Nasir, `Pakistan: New Policy Says Nuclear Weapons “Unavoidable” for National Security’, Nawa-e-Waqt [in Urdu], 11 March 2004 Via BBC Monitoring) Remarks of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, on Nuclear Policies and the CTBT’, National Defence College, 20 May 1999.
Naeem Salik, `Minimum Deterrence and India-Pakistan Nuclear Dialogue- Case Study of Pakistan’, landau Network-Centro Volta, March 2006.
The Pakistani government has consistently said that it rejects the logic of parity, and that its goal is simply to attain the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on India. According to foreign Minister Abdul Sattar in 1999. Minimum deterrence `cannot be quantified in static numbers. The Indian build up will necessitate review and reassessment. In order to ensure the survivability and credibility of the deterrent Pakistan will have to maintain preserve and upgrade its capability.
Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, Address to the `Pakistan Response to the Indian Nuclear Doctrine’, seminar, 25 November 1999 (text reproduced in Disarmament diplomacy.
Pakistan Nuclear Doctrine and Nuclear Forces
Pakistan has consistently slated that its nuclear weapons re solely intended to deter military aggression Officials stress that `the use of nuclear weapons as a war-fighting tool is not a contemplated doctrine in Pakistani strategic thiking’.89 A few statements have referred to `weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD), suggesting that the Pakistani deterrent may have a role in discouraging chemical or biological attacks.9v this is all the more likely after India stated in 2003 that its official policy of no-first-use’ would be reviewed in case of a chemical or biological attack. However Pakistan’s policy is also in line with the negative security assurances’ given by nuclear weapon states: it will no use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against no-nuclear countries.91 This means, in practice, that Pakistan reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a hypothetical Indian chemical or biological attack.
Feroz Hassan Khan. `Comparative Strategic Culture: this Case Study of Pakistan’, Strategic Insight. Vol. 4, no. 10, October 2005 See for example, `Statement of Permanent representative of Pakistan to the United Nations in Response to Security Council Resolution 1172, 6 June 1998 Para 46.
Major General Muhammad Ali Durrani, `Pakistan’s Strategic Thinking and the Role of Nuclear Weapons’, Cooperative Center Occasional Paper, SAND 2004 3375p, Sandia National Laboratories July 2004, Pakistan’s force levels rely on a principle of `minimum deterrence’, which was first publicly announced in 1999. Pakistan nuclear systems are kept in a low-alert form, probably to minimize the temptation of an Indian pre-emptive strike or the risk of unauthorized launch. Missiles are not mated with warheads and the physics packages (the fissile cores) are not inserted into the warheads themselves. According to the Defence Ministry, the launch mechanism, the device and other mechanisms are kept at different places. Nuclear safely, physical security and access (maintenance) reasons all argue for separating the fissile cores from the warheads.
Being in a situation of perceived conventional inferiority vis-a-vis a mortal enemy, Pakistan’s conception of nuclear planning is close to NATO cold War thinking, and its employment policy may very will look like f l exible response.
Pakistan and Arms Control
It is unlikely that Pakistan would be the first of the four Asian nuclear-capable countries to ratify the comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), unless Islamabad took the bold decision to do so after a final testing campaign – not unlike France in 1995. It is equally unlikely that Pakistan will be the first to test again.79 At the same time, if India were to test, Islamabad would probably seize the opportunity for both technical reasons (improving reliability and security, testing new designs) and political ones (settling the score again). Improving the plutonium formulas, testing a small warhead for the Babur missile, and perhaps also testing fusion designs, would be possible objectives of a second Pakistani testing campaign, which is all the more likely to happen since Pakistan, like India, has a small nuclear arsenal, which puts a premium on reliability.
There are thus three scenarios, ranging from the most likely to the least likely: (a) Pakistan resumes testing after an Indian testing campaign, CTBT signature and ratification then becomes an option; (b) Pakistan resumes testing after a critical design flaw is detected in one of its warheads formulas; (c) Pakistan announces that it is joining the CTBT after conduction a final testing campaign.
As noted above, Pakistan has produced a fairly large stockpile of fissile material. If Islamabad refrains from worse case assumptions, this could make it easier for Pakistan to join a Fissile-material cut-off Treaty (FMCT). However, Pakistan will want to avoid any regime that would give a perpetual edge’ to India in this regard. Therefore, Islamabad’s position is that three conditions should be progressive, (b) transfers of stockpiles to civilian use should be organized so that sates with the largest stockpiles lead the way in a verifiable fashion, and (c) caps on future stocks should reduce asymmetries in existing stocks.80 Pakistani officials insist that any FMCT should be `non-discriminatory’ and `universal’.
Pakistan stated in June 2001 that it would not be the first to resume testing (Abdul Sattar, address toe the Carnegie International Non-proliferation conference. Washington C, 18 June 2001). Pakistani leaders have renewed this commitment several times since then, including in a 16 November 2006 keynote address by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Ehsan ul-Haq to the SASSU conference.
A.Q. Khan Conundrum
The Khan network was not nuclear weapons `Wal-Mart’, since its contributions to proliferation concerned only – so far as is known today centrifuge technology and, in one instance at least, a weapon designs. For most of the deals it is hard to separate A.Q. Khan the individual from the global network he led. But neither were Khan and the network synonymous. Although Khan was the deal maker, the network often appeared to act autonomously, driven as much by his foreign business partners as by his own ambitions. By the time of the Libya deal, the network was a `globalised supply chain’. Production capabilities became widespread-with computer-controlled lathes, components could be made almost anywhere – and knowledge became diffuse.
Reasons for A.Q. Khan’s Liberty of Action
From the outset, Pakistani government authorities provided A.Q. Khan with a remarkable degree of power and autonomy, partly because he demanded it, partly because of the very sensitive nature of his work, and partly because he was able to achieve tangible results faster than the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), the rival scientific laboratory to Khan Research Laboratories (KRL).
Although A.Q. Khan enjoyed freedom of action during most of his working career in Pakistan, there is evidence that officials in the Pakistani security establishment were suspicious of his activities from as early as 1989. Ever since the rule of President Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s, each successive Pakistani government had found a reason to worry about KRL. In some cases they reportedly ordered investigations. Until 2001, however, A.Q Khan’s illicit activities were overlooked due to the importance of his laboratories to national security a well as his heroic status among the Pakistani populace. The government wanted to make use of his skills and the connections established in his network for as long as possible, and consequently gave him free rein until finally forced to take action.
The fact that Khan was privy to the highest national secrets meant that his activities could not be easily questioned. His security apparatus was not designed to monitor him, but rather to protect him and his organization from external spies and anything that might compromise his foreign procurement for Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Feroz Hassan Khan, `Nuclear Proliferation Motivations Lessons from Pakistan’, Non-proliferation Review, vol. 13, no. 3, November 2006.
Pakistani State and A.Q. Khan Affair
However, no evidence has emerged that clear directive was ever given to Khan to provide nuclear technology to Iran. In any case the onward proliferation not only continued after the departure of G.I. Khan. B. Bhutto and Beg from power, but also expanded, from 1994. Khan cannot be characterized strictly as either a government representative or a businessman acting independently. He was in fact both, in varying degrees according to the circumstances.
The state’s complicity in his proliferation ranged along a spectrum. At one end, his procurement for Pakistan’s nuclear programme was state authorized, supported and funded, although he had great autonomy in making his own purchases. Khan’s purported discussions with the Saudis were almost surely state authorized. At the other end of the spectrum, the Khan network’s sales to Libya of centrifuge equipment produced in Malaysia, Turkey, Europe and South Africa and transshipped in Dubai were almost exclusively a private business transaction beyond state control. The same is likely to be true of his purported exploratory business triple to other countries in Africa. The offer to Iraq also appears to have been a private venture by the network, although the dearth of evidence makes it hard to draw conclusions.
While knowledge of a transaction denotes complicity, however, it does not necessary imply authorization. Islamabad’s official’s line is that government of the day did not know the true extent of A.Q Khan’s activities, and that what was known about his corruption was overlooked because of his political status and his contribution to national security. Indeed, a careful analysis shows that most of Khan’s dealings were carried out on his own initiative.
Motives behind A.Q Khan’s Actions
In the beginning, Khan was working only for Pakistan’s national interest, which was to procure nuclear weapons technology by any means. He was encouraged to engage in parallel business dealings so that KRL could decrease its reliance on state funding. He was not the first to benefit from the illicit trade in destructive technologies, but the accelerated the consolidation of the market and, n doing so, did much to spread nuclear weapons technology. He removed key obstacles in Pakistan’s successful quest for nuclear weapons. Khan’s personal and Pakistan’s national motives came into conflict as soon as Khan’s was lured into lucrative clandestine dealings. In spite of his position as a nationally revered figure, Khan still harboured further personal ambition. His problem was that the secretive nature of the Pakistani nuclear programme meant his achievement has to be kept hidden from the rest of the world.
Khan aspired to defy the West, which had portrayed him as a villain and convicted him of stealing centrifuge designs (in the Netherlands). Khan felt his capabilities had been insulted. He may also have felt a genuine sense of injustice and a victim of hypocrisy given the high number of Western industrialists who were more than ready to do business with him. He had to prove he could deliver, and outwit the West and its hurdles. Combined with this was Khan’s personal anger and Pakistan’s sense of having been victimized owing to India’s nuclear test (France, Germany and Canada reneged on contracts for nuclear facilities under intense US pressure after India’s 1974 test, as noted in chapter one). Khan reportedly told his interrogators that he believed that `the emergence of more nuclear states would ease Western attention on Pakistan’, 104 an explanation that rings true.
Khan said that he believed he was `helping the Muslim cause’, but this is a less credible explanation since the recipients of his assistance included North Korea, a non-Muslim country. In fact, Khan was not quite spreading the Islamic bomb, but acting for those states that defied the West in their nuclear pursuits, and more generally, in their foreign polices. Explaining his actions through this religious dimension obscures the financial motivation that appears to have been behind his dealings with Iran. He may also have felt the need for revenge against Zia, who in 1987 had rebuked him (page 94). The Iran case can be explained by simple market mechanisms: there was a long-standing demand from Tehran, and three was now an available supply of discarded P- I centrifuges. This provided an opportunity to expand the business of the network, giving profits to all collaborators, who included his business partners as well as those within KRL and some government officials who might have facilitated or overlooked the deal. The offer to Iraq in 1990 shows that there was no consistent political strategy behind the network’s exports: it did not make sense to sell simultaneously to Saddam Hussein and to his arch-enemies in Tehran. Khan used the No-dong deal with North Korea to retain his value in competition with his PAEC rivals. As for Khan’s motive for Libya -it seems that he simply wanted to make money and to satisfy his ego. He felt hurt that his authority had been called into question, and that he had been removed from KRL, and thus wanted to prove that he could deliver a nuclear capability anywhere in the world through the network, for which the Libya deal was an opportunity to `go global’, expanding from its original Pakistani roots. In sum, a constellation of different motivations explains the various deals made by the Khan network, varying in importance over time and according to circumstances: ego, profit, nationalism and Islamic identity.
What did A.Q Khan Proliferate?
In downplaying the damage caused by Khan’s onward proliferation, Pakistani officials stress that the centrifuge equipment he sold to Iran was used and deficient, as was probably true of the equipment he transferred to North Korea, and, in the case of Libya, that it was incomplete. None of these countries succeeded in constructing a nuclear weapon from the technology they obtained from the Khan network, although how close they got to a bomb as a result of the transfers is a matter of some debate.
The nuclear device the North Koreans tested in October 2006 was based not on HEU but on the plutonium they had separated from the spent fuel rods from their research reactors. How much progress they made in their Khan-assisted centrifuge procurement programme is simply unknown there is no evidence that North Korea has any ability to produce HEU; but neither was there any evidence that it could produce UF6 before it emerged as the most likely source of the UF6 that Libya obtained from Khan. Iran has made the most widely documented progress in centrifuge technology with Khan’s help, but as of the beginning of 2007, it was at last two or three years away from being able to produce enough HEU for one nuclear weapon. Libya produced no enriched uranium from the equipment it imported, and assuming it would have received more help and the missing UF6 and centrifuge parts, it was at least three or four years away from being able to produce a weapon when Gadhafi renounced the programme in December 2003. Even then Libya would have needed a suitable delivery vehicle.
According to Pakistani authorities, Khan’s interrogation has not revealed anything substantive to suggest that the network was actively involved in providing nuclear components to these countries. Pakistani officials acknowledge that khan may have discussed potential `business arrangements’ with those countries, as he did with Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya, but to date it is nuclear whether any actual transactions were completed.
End of A.Q Khan Activities – Efforts of Pakistani Government
After Musharraf’s takeover in 1999, the government took a fresh approach toward the issues of corruption and accountability, and established a national Accountability Bureau to recover plundered national wealth. Musharraf’s government also began to look more carefully at A.Q. Khan, but often only in response to US pressure in particular, following President Bill Clinton’s visit to Islamabad in March 2000, the intelligence services conducted a comprehensive investigation into A.Q. Khan’s foreign procurements and entrepreneurial activities. This effort resulted in a secret 120-page report detailing Khan’s irregular financial practices, his $8 million in various bank accounts and his $10m hotel in Timbuktu.
According to a former case manager at the National Accountability Bureau, however, indicting a man seen as a national hero for corruption and financial embezzlement was beyond the bureau’s political ability. An indictment would have exposed national secrets and the involvement foreign parties in Pakistan’s strategic weapons programmes. Furthermore such a move may also have imp! j sated past programmes Furthermore, such a move may also ‘lave implicated past or current government and military officials. No action was taken.
In 2000 US intelligence information passed to Pakistan which reportedly included photographic evidence of centrifuge transfers to North Korea] 8 – resulted in a directive to the ISI to raid an aircraft chartered by KRL and bound for North Korea. Nothing was found during the raid, apparently because of a tip-off. In autumn of the same year, the ISI reported additional foreign contacts and travel plans by A.Q. Khan, including an attempt to arrange a secret flight that included ‘ refuelling stops both ways in Zahedan, an Iranian city close to the Pakistani border noted for its smuggling activity.19 This was a clear violation of new procedures that required Khan to obtain formal approval for all foreign travel and business. Given the accumulation of so many questionable incidents, along with his growing resistance to military authority and oversight, Khan’s outright refusal to discuss his Zahedan trip plans was the final straw that convinced Musharraf to remove him. In light of the political stakes involved in dealing with a national hero, however, the removal was handled carefully. In March 2001, A.Q. Khan was ceremoniously retired from his KRL post, appointed as special adviser to the chief executive on strategic and KRL affairs, a post equivalent in rank to a federal minister. Hassan Aas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (New Delhi: Pentagon Press, 2005), p. 231; Gordon Corera, Shopping for bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Security, and the rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), William Langewiesche, `the Point of No Return’, The Atlantic Monthly, January-February 2006.
On 1 February, A. Q. Khan was summoned for a face-to-face meeting with the president Musharraf later said that he first asked A. Q. Khan to be straight with him. Khan denied the initial allegations that he aided Iran, claiming them to be motivated by a US conspiracy. Accounts of the meeting indicate that Musharraf then provided more evidence from the internal investigation and that, in response, Khan stated that he had been persuaded by two deceased senior aides of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to covertly provide nuclear technology to Iran. Musharraf continued to cite additional evidence of Khan’s wrongdoing, including financial transactions and the letters that the ISI had intercepted en route to the Iranians, advising them to employ the same tactic of pointing the blame only at deceased individuals that Khan was using at that very meeting. Khan buckled, collapsed and begged for mercy.
Since February 2004, he has been under house arrest. His house is heavily guarded, and he is prohibited from having any outside contacts. His daughter Dina complained in a BBC interview that the family’s mail is opened, their telephones tapped and the house bugged. Khan has since suffered high blood pressure and other health problems, including prostate cancer, for which he had surgery in August 2006. Hospital visits have been the only occasions in which he has temporarily left house arrest.
Recognition of Pakistani Efforts in Clipping A.Q. Khan Activities
In a press interview on the day of the confession, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said `Khan’s national humiliation is justice for what he did’.
Pakistani Cooperation with the IAEA and
Foreign Government on A.Q. Khan Disclosures
Pakistan generally kept the US apprised of its decisions regarding A.Q. Khan. Washington’s primary objective was to unravel the network and shut down its operations as fast as possible, a goal that was more likely to be achieved with Khan’s cooperation. Bringing him to justice was a secondary objective and more complicated. Khan’s activities were those of an individual in charge of a scientific organization in a state that was not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and therefore was not in violation of international law. The United States sought to interrogate Khan directly but, given the domestic political pressures on Islamabad, even the rumour of such a deal would have been politically prohibitive. It was resisted by the army because of national security concerns. The Pakistani government agreed that Washington could submit questions to Khan, the responses to which were passed back to Washington. Pakistan also posed questions to Khan on behalf of the UK, Japan and South Korea in connection with their investigations of Khan network associates, as well as on behalf of the IAEA, to their mixed satisfaction. The United States publicly praised Pakistan’s cooperation.
Pakistan’s cooperation with the IAEA is crucial to the agency’s continuing efforts to unravel A.Q. Khan’s network. As with a US and UK intelligence agencies, the IAEA wants to know exactly what Khan sold and to whom. It is vitally important to learn which other countries were at the receiving end of his onward proliferation. Islamabad’s cooperation has also helped the IAEA judge the completeness and correctness of Iran’s answers to their questions over its previously clandestine uranium enrichment programme. To confirm Iran’s revised story -that the HEU traces were the result of Centrifuges having been contaminated by their origin in Pakistan’s weapons programme -the IAEA sought to match the isotopic signature of the centrifuges inspected in Iran with that of Pakistani centrifuge. Although the IAEA’s request to sample Pakistan’s centrifuges was initially declined, after considerable deliberation and heated parliamentary debate Pakistan cooperated and eventually sent centrifuges from the same set as those sold to Iran to Vienna for forensic testing by the IAEA.
Like Washington, the IAEA, has accepted that Pakistan will not allow it to question A.Q. Khan directly, on grounds of protecting national security information. Pakistani officials maintain that, after two and a half years of ISI interrogation, there is no information left to extract.
Failure of other States to Punish A.Q. Khan accomplics
The lenient penalties Pakistan gave Khan and his KRL associates, and the opacity of Pakistan’s investigations and judicial proceedings continue to elicit international criticism, on the grounds that any future secondary proliferators will have reason to believe that they too would be pardoned for political reasons. In failing to exact harsh punishment on the domestic end of Khans’ black market network, however, Pakistan is hardly exceptional. Most of Khan’s foreign accomplices remain free, apart from those mentioned above.
The few prosecutions and light sentences that have been imposed to date are not commensurate with the scale of the proliferation that the Khan network abetted. Nor do they create a credible deterrent to any future proliferation networks. The difficulty of applying intelligence-derived information to the evidentiary standards of the courtroom and other legal complications (e.g. in trials against Henk Slebos in the Netherlands and Golthard Lerch in Germany) are one explanation. A more general problem is that I most countries violations of export control are not perceived as serious crimes.
Pakistan’s clean record of Radioactive Materials Safety
South Asia. Since 1993, nine trafficking cases involving uranium ore, yellowcake and LEU have been recorded in India, one case in Bangladesh and another in Pakistan. Most of the uranium seized in India appears to have been stolen from local facilities. For example, the most recent seizure of uranium was recorded in the northern western state of Assam in April 2005. Two men were arrested with 1 Kg of yellowcake, which appears to have been stolen from a government nuclear facility in Shillong, the capital of neighboring Meghalaya state – the location of India’s richest uranium mines.
Interest of suppliers abetted proliferation networks
The weakness of export controls and the fatalism of Western suppliers were the strongest factors abetting the import network. Many industrialists reasoned that `if we do not do it, others will’ and deliberately violated the law. There was also strong resistance to perceived American pressure. Some countries, like France and Switzerland, maintained a self-consciously independent political stance. Others, like Germany and the Netherlands, also made the promotion of exports involving precision engineering a national priority.
Many European bureaucrat shoes jobs involved export controls may have viewed American pressure to shop exports to Pakistan as a covert attempt to obtain a commercial advantage. Finally, the nuclear market was particularly competitive, and many Europeans did not want to see it dominate by the United States. The Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom wanted a competitive enrichment market, and banded together to form Urenco in 1971. Pakistan also actively sought materials and equipment from the United States, which was itself not consistent in enforcing its own export control policy.