The seller was an ambulance driver, who had turned up to the meeting in
Istanbul with a friend and over a kilogram of uranium wrapped in
newspaper. The merchandise was from one of the old Soviet republics, the
man said, and he wanted U.S. $750,000 for it. Instead, he ended up in
jail. The buyers were undercover policemen.
The uranium seizure,
confirmed by the Turkish interior ministry, was a police sting
operation, but it is hardly reassuring. It raises the question of how
many similar deals are being made by more competent salesmen of what is
potentially the world's most deadly commodity.
The chilling uncertainty loomed over President Bush's blunt statements Tuesday. His remarks have added the White House's authority to a conclusion reached years ago by most proliferation experts. The threat of a terrorist nuclear weapon is real. The only significant uncertainty is the timing of the first attempt at a nuclear attack, and what kind of bomb would be used.
As the president pointed out, in raising the specter of an al Qaida nuclear attack he was simply quoting Osama bin Laden himself, who has told journalists that it would be a "sin" not to develop an Islamic bomb. "He announced that this was his intention and I believe we need to take him seriously," Bush said at a joint appearance with President Jacques Chirac of France at the White House.
There is also no doubt that Bin Laden is in the nuclear market. In February this year, one of the Saudi fugitive's aides, Jamal al-Fadl, told a U.S. court of his role in an attempt to buy U.S. $1.5 million worth of uranium in Sudan. Al-Fadl, who was giving evidence in the embassy bombings trial, testified that in 1993 he was sent to meet a man near Khartoum who was selling uranium apparently from South Africa. He did not know if the deal went through, but he said that al-Qaida was "very serious" about making the purchase.
Afghanistan Black Market is Awash With Uranium
Once Bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, getting hold of uranium and other nuclear material did not present a serious problem. The black market in Afghanistan is awash with it. Robert Puffer, an American antiquities dealer in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, said he was frequently offered enriched uranium.
"It was in lead containers with cyrillic writing on it," Puffer told the British newspaper Guardian. "They would carry yellow cake [uranium] in matchboxes in their breast pockets. They would have rashes and they would ask me why. And I said: 'You're stupid—that stuff is dangerous.'"
Puffer said he was once taken to a warehouse in Peshawar where canisters of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union, wrapped in sacking, were stored under the floor. The radioactivity sent a geiger counter buzzing from outside the building.
Having access to such radioactive material, however, is a long way from making a real nuclear bomb. That would require plutonium and highly enriched uranium and a lot of technical know-how. However, the mishmash of nuclear fuel and radioactive junk being touted in Istanbul over the weekend and which Puffer saw in Peshawar would suffice to make a "dirty bomb."
Such a weapon would consist of a rough assembly of radioactive material clumped around conventional explosives. When detonated, the blast would send up a plume of radioactive particles into the atmosphere killing and contaminating hundreds of thousands of people for miles around.
