January 6, 2005 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
The Jerusalem Post’s latest puzzle is a bit more complictated than your usual Sunday cryptic crossword.
Days after former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy expressed fears that Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia might have acquired some kind of nuclear capability via an illicit weapons trafficking network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the chief architect of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, Israeli military sources have told The Jerusalem Post that, thanks to Khan, one of those three Arab states now has the potential to achieve a “significant nuclear leap.â€
The sources said that Israel is aware of Khan’s contacts with all three countries, but that he had provided to one of them expertise and material to manufacture nuclear bombs. They would not specify which country. [JP]Syria, perhaps, will quite obviously most peoples’ favourite suspect, if not Saudi Arabia, whose nuclear nexus with Pakistan is rather well-known. Not well-behaved Egypt, surely!
But the word going around is that Egypt indeed is the suspect, who in spite of being a card carrying member of the non-proliferation treaty, carried out nuclear weapons experiments as late as last year. How should that make Mohammed ElBaradei feel? Indeed before this is used to embarass ElBaradei and block his candidature for a second term at the helm of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, a proper international interrogation of Khan himself is in order.
Related Link: If it’s Monday it must be Libya
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