WASHINGTON — U.S. and British intelligence services in late September discovered that a freighter bound for Libya was hauling thousands of parts for centrifuges, a key component for producing nuclear weapons, senior U.S. officials said Wednesday. Officials said the interception of the cargo, worth tens of millions of dollars, was a factor in squeezing Libya to give up its deadliest weapons programs.
The shipment was headed from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, an interim transshipment point, aboard a German ship. With help from the German government and the German shipping company, the United States was able to get the freighter, BBC China, diverted to a southern Italian port shortly after it passed through the Suez Canal.
Officials boarded the ship in Italy in early October and seized the cargo, which was not listed on the ship’s manifest, U.S. officials said. The craft was less than two days from docking in Libya.
The Bush administration believes the intelligence coup accelerated Libya’s cooperation with the United States and Britain. Although secret talks on Libya’s weapons of mass destruction programs had begun six months earlier, the government of Moammar Gadhafi had not yet given a date for U.S. and British intelligence to visit Libyan weapons-development sites. After the interdiction, U.S. and British inspectors were in Libya within two weeks, U.S. officials said.
The operation, details of which were reported in the Wall Street Journal, was the first interdiction under the new Proliferation Security Initiative, an agreement among 11 countries to stop and search planes and ships suspected of carrying banned weapons or missile technology. Seizure of the cargo proves the initiative’s importance as a new tool in tracking and curtailing the spread of weapons technology, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
"It’s clearly a success for the proliferation initiative but it’s also an allied success, especially for the Germans and Italians," a senior administration official said. The official described both the German government and the shipping company as "extremely cooperative."
The secret shipment also offered important insight into Libya’s arms programs. Although U.S. intelligence was aware of Libya’s chemical weapons program, Washington was surprised by Tripoli’s ongoing interest in developing nuclear arms. The shipment, several large crates, also indicated Gadhafi had an active nuclear program, U.S. officials said.
The Bush administration is still reluctant to provide details of the operation or the source of the centrifuge parts. U.S. officials insisted the shipment did not come from Pakistan, which has been linked to sales of nuclear technology to other countries.
"The technology we’re talking about was stolen years ago from Urenco, a European consortium. It was used in Pakistan to enrich uranium but it was also used elsewhere. There’s a black market in this material," said the senior U.S. official.
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