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Kazakhstan-Nuclear Material |
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April 7, 2000
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, APR 6 (UNB/AP) - Scientists made a first check on nearly one ton of radioactive material found hidden in a truckload of scrap metal bound for Pakistan, the Interfax news agency reported Wednesday.
Customs officials in Uzbekistan said they discovered 10 lead boxes on the truck last week that were emitting powerful radiation when the truck was halted at a remote border crossing with Turkmenistan. It was headed for Pakistan via Iran on a trip that began in Kazakhstan.
The discovery reinforced worries about smuggling of nuclear material from countries of the former Soviet Union to such countries as Iran, which the United States believes is trying to build a nuclear bomb, and Pakistan, which successfully tested a nuclear bomb in 1998.
After the Soviet collapse in 1991, Kazakhstan declared itself a neutral and non-nuclear country and turned over its Soviet-made nuclear weapons to Russia, but retained nuclear research facilities. The United States is helping the country destroy remaining weapons facilities.
After being halted in Uzbekistan, the truck was sent back to Kazakhstan, where officials were investigating what was aboard.
Kazak nuclear scientists at the Institute of the Radiation Control Department told Interfax the material was emitting about 1,200 milliroentgen per hour, enough to cause radiation sickness in a person after 50 days of exposure. The radiation level exceeded Kazak safety limits 100 times, the report said.
The report did not mention whether the truck's driver, an Iranian national, had become ill.
To get a closer reading of what sort of material is involved, authorities sent a sample from the boxes to Kazakhstan's National Nuclear Center at Semipalatinsk, a facility in eastern Kazakhstan formerly used to test Soviet nuclear weapons, Interfax said.
Some Kazak security officials meanwhile denied this week that the truck carried any nuclear materials, even as news agencies reported the scientists' findings.
Yerlan Kozhagapanov, a regional customs department director, said no containers were on the truck and that officials in Uzbekistan had been confused by using broken down radiation meters, Interfax reported.
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