One consignment of North Korean missile parts carried by a cargo ship to Karachi was caught by Indian Coast Guard few years ago in 1996. Apparently, after China stopped missile supplies, Pakistan turned to NK. It has been suggested that China could not have not known about NK/Pakistan deal since both are close allies of China and Karakoram highway may have been used to transport materials. But hard evidence that will stand up in a law court hard to come by in such cases.
> But I don't see why NK would need help with its plutonium enrichment
> program if it's been going since 1989. And more to the point, I don't see
> any reason to think Pakistan would be able to supply any if it did.
> Pakistan's atomic bomb program is plutonium based, just like the one that
> was stopped in NK under the Basic Understanding in 1994. So there's no
> reason why it would know any more about the matter than NK.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme is based on enriched uranium, as far as I know.
> I also have a second question. The CIA asserts in the same testimony than
> the North's uranium enrichment program would produce enough material to
> produce weapons in 2 to 3 years. The only detailed information I've seen,
> which all seems to come down to a single NK defector who gave a detailed
> interview to a Japanese paper in 2000, said that the plant in question was
> producing 1.3 grams a day, or roughly half a kilogram a year. It takes 25
> kilograms to make a bomb out of enriched uranium.
I have read about nuclear bombs weighing 5 kilograms. After 9/11, there was a scare about nuclear weapons that could be carried in suitcases. Putin has expressed his anxiety about Pakistan nuclear weapons falling into Al- Qaida hands, when Bush went to Moscow last week.
Ulhas