'Israel wanted to destroy Pak nukes'

Obviously, efforts to close down AQ Khan’s nuclear Wal-Mart, finally achieved by the US in 2003-04, had begun in 1981, reports A Baruah.

A new book claims that Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency, ran a highly secretive bombing campaign directed at individuals in Europe helping Pakistani scientist AQ Khan build a nuclear weapon.

HT Image

Deception, authored by investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, said the first victim was Heinz Mebus, a close friend of Khan, who had helped build Pakistan’s fluoride and uranium conversion plants in 1979.

"A letter bomb exploded inside Mebus’s home in Erlangen, West Germany. Mebus was out at work, but his dog died in the attack,” the authors wrote. European investigators linked this bombing to another one in Berne, Switzerland, in February 1981, outside the home of Eduard German, managing director of CORA Engineering, which supplied a gasification and solidification unit to Pakistan in 1979.

"It (the information in the book) is not in the public domain," Jyoti Sinha, a former intelligence official, told this writer. Was he surprised by these revelations? "Not at all. That would be quite natural," said Sinha, who was the number two man in the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW).

Former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, when asked about the Mossad "campaign", said, "I have no information. It never came across my table."

Berne police could not find any trace of the attackers, only references to a gang calling itself the Group for Non-Proliferation in south Asia. They, however, found that similar attacks had been carried out by other equally untraceable groups, including one called the Committee to Safeguard the Islamic Revolution.

"Then, on 18 May 1981, another bomb exploded, this one planted in the southern German town of Markdof outside a company that had been supplying Pakistan since 1976,” the book added.

Obviously, efforts to close down AQ Khan’s nuclear Wal-Mart, finally accomplished by the United States in 2003-04, had begun back in 1981.