China gifted Pakistan uranium for 2 bombs Pak Nuke Scientist A Q Khan Spills The Beans

Chidanand Rajghatta | TNN

Washington: China's dirty little secret of nuclear proliferation to Pakistan, including virtually giving Islamabad two nuclear weapons on a platter while the US remained oblivious and smug, has exploded in Washington. Embarrassingly for US president Barack Obama, the disclosures come on the eve of his much-anticipated visit to Beijing.
In a letter that Khan sent to British journalist Simon Henderson, parts of which have already been made public with the latest dribble coming out ahead of Obama's visit to China next week, the Pakistani metallurgist reveals the secret.
In 1976, Pakistan's then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto approached China's supreme leader chairman Mao in his quest for the nuclear bomb. By this time, Bhutto had already invited expat Pakistani scientists, including Khan, to return home to help make the bomb to ensure that the country was never again humiliated by India the way it happened in 1971.
"Chinese experts started coming regularly to learn the whole technology" from Pakistan and Pakistani experts were dispatched to Hanzhong in central China, where they helped "put up a centrifuge plant," Khan said.
After winning Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's approval, Khan and three others flew aboard a US made Pakistani C-130 to Urumqi. Khan says they enjoyed barbecued lamb while waiting for the Chinese military to pack the small uranium bricks into lead-lined boxes, 10 single-kilogram ingots to a box for a total of 50 kgs of highly enriched uranium, for the flight back to Islamabad. "The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50 kgs enriched uranium."
By Khan's account, Pakistan did not initially use the Chinese fissile material and kept it in storage till 1985 because they had made a "few bombs"with their own material. The Pakistanis then asked Beijing if it wanted its nuclear material back. After a few days, Khan says the Chinese wrote back "that the HEU loaned earlier was now to be considered as a gift... in gratitude" for Pakistani help. The Pakistanis promptly used the Chinese material to fabricate hemispheres for two weapons and added them to Pakistan's arsenal.
"The speed of our work and our achievements surprised our worst enemies and adversaries and the West stood helplessly by to see a Third World nation mastering the most advanced nuclear technology in the shortest possible span of time," he boasts in a separate 11-page narrative.
Pak rejects report of uranium supply
Pakistan on Friday angrily rejected a US newspaper report that China provided the nuclear-armed Muslim state with weapons grade uranium for two bombs in 1982. A spokesman for Pakistan's foreign ministry rejected the allegations in a Washington Post article as "baseless." "Pakistan strongly rejects the assertions in the article that is evidently timed to malign Pakistan and China," the spokesman said in a statement. AFP

- Times of India (14-11-2009)