From: "Keith Willshaw"
Date: 3/17/04 10:24 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

According to the report on the IAEA website some 20 centrifuges
were supplied pre-assembled and parts for another 200 were
supplied by an unnamed foreign supplier.

They further state that they had ordered 10,000 centrifuges
similar to an advanced European design and that parts for
some of these had been seized aboard a freighter at a northern
mediterranean port in October 2003.

They also managed to get documentation related to nuclear
weapon fabrication and design from a foreign source,
(presumably Pakistan)

The investigation of these foreign suppliers is aparently
proceeding and a statement is scheduled for June.

Watch this space.

Keith

The actual centerfuges came in component form (some assembly required) from
various machine shops in Maylasia. It has been reported that Dr. Khan stole the
design for them from a Dutch company that he briefly worked for. The Maylasian
companies have claimed no knowledge of what the end use of the parts they were
producing was to be.

What, exactly, the Japanese supplied based on this report is not completely
clear to me, but it sounds like equipment for rendering the material into a gas
suitable to be fed into the centerfuge systems or for some other precursor
step. Based on the report, the equipment was "huge" , amounting to tons and
tons of material that would have had to have gone by ship, and most definitely
wouldn't have escaped the notice of customs officials.

Forget Iraq for a moment, unraveling this business is the Bush administration's
largest accomplishment.
Dave