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Bekijk Volledige Versie : Rusland verwerpt verhaal over AQ-nukes



lennart
24-03-04, 13:28
Russia Dismisses Talk of al-Qaeda Nuclear Purchases
By Sergei Blagov
CNSNews.com Correspondent
March 23, 2004

Moscow (CNSNews.com) - Russia has denied a fresh claim that Osama bin Laden's terror network bought nuclear weapons or weapons components in former Soviet states during the 1990s.

The Australian Broadcasting Corp. Monday aired an interview with Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, who said al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, had confirmed the purchases during an interview in Afghanistan in 2001.

Mir said when the subject of nuclear weapons came up during the interview, Zawahiri had laughed and said: "Mr. Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available.

"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent [the capital of Uzbekistan], to other Central Asian states, and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs," the journalist quoted Zawahri as saying.

Preview reports of the ABC interview with Mir sparked concerns in Australia and New Zealand, after Mir said Zawahiri said he had visited two countries several times during the 1990s while organizing the global terror network.

The two governments said there was no evidence that the visits had taken place.

Zawahiri, who is suspected of having masterminded al-Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, was thought in recent days to have been holed up in the remote Pakistan-Afghan border region, and the target of stepped up U.S. and Pakistani operations in the area.

Russia's atomic agency Monday denied the nuclear claims.

The official RIA news agency quoted an unnamed official at the Federal Atomic Energy Agency (formerly known as the Atomic Energy Ministry) as saying no nuclear weapons had gone missing and there had been no attempt to buy portable nuclear weapons.

It was practically impossible to purchase nuclear weapons or components in Russia, said the official, who dismissed the claims as slander.

This is the second al-Qaeda nuclear claim in as many months.

In February, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper said Ukrainian scientists traveled to the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1998 and clinched a deal with al-Qaeda for the sale of an unspecified number of portable "suitcase bombs."

Al-Hayat quoted sources close to the network as saying that al-Qaeda would detonate the devices only in the United States, or if it faced a "crushing blow" threatening its existence.

Ukrainian officials denied the reports, saying that Ukraine had transferred its nuclear arsenal to Russia by 1996 and, as such, had no tactical nuclear weapons to sell in 1998.

Ukraine's foreign ministry also threatened to sue the newspaper, but has yet to do so.

Allegations that Ukraine might have lost nuclear warheads surfaced in September 2002, when Ukrainian lawmaker Pyotr Simonenko said that the transfer to Russia of only 2,200 of the country's 2,400 warheads had been documented.

The remaining 200 warheads were unaccounted for, he claimed. The government at the time denied the allegations.

In May 1997, Russia's security council secretary Gen. Alexander Lebed, claimed that Moscow was unable to account for 80 small Soviet-made atomic demolition munitions.

Lebed also said that 40 nuclear suitcases -- each one equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT and capable of killing up to 100,000 people -- had disappeared from the Russian arsenal after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moscow denies that such weapons existed.

Lebed died in a helicopter crash in April 2002.

Fears that nuclear weapons or know-how may have fallen into the hands of terrorists were revived last month when it was revealed that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist had sold nuclear secrets and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

(CNSNews Pacific Rim Bureau Chief Patrick Goodenough contributed to this report.)
http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archiv e\200403\FOR20040323d.html

Maar dit zal je natuurlijk niet horen in de Westerse pers. :moe:

Het is overigens wel opvallend dat dit verhaal nu wordt gerecycled in zoveel landen. Dat kan dus betekenen dat er een aanslag met een nucleair wapen op stapel staat. Mogelijke scenario kan zijn dat Al-Qa'ida direct de schuld krijgt, maar dat Rusland het verwijt krijgt dat het z'n eigen land niet kan besturen en dat het gepacificeerd dit te worden. Ook is mogelijk dat Rusland ervan zal worden beschuldigd dat het OBL steunt.