Rep. Hunter says UAE facilitates nuclear smuggling
Rep. Duncan Hunter, the powerful Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday he will fight to block the sale of port facilities to a United Arab Emirates-owned company because that country has taken a lax approach towards nuclear non-proliferation.
Hunter said the United Arab Emirates has played a key role in the transshipment of nuclear components to Pakistan, Iran, Libya and North Korea.
“United Arab Emirates officials and private companies have regularly waived through or turned a blind eye to the shipment of nuclear triggers to Pakistan and nerve gas precursors to Iran. Their track record is terrifying,” he said in a statement.
But administration officials have testified during the past week that the UAE has been very helpful in unraveling Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling network by helping the United States track shipments and taking action against people in the county who assisted the network. Information provided by the UAE led to the interdiction of the vessel that carried parts to Libya from Malaysia, and eventually led Libya to give up its nuclear program.
Hunter issued a list of alleged smuggling incidents, cataloged by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, that he said disqualify Dubai from operating within U.S. ports, including:
* UAE customs officials ignored U.S. protests and allowed 66 American high-speed electrical switches, which can be used for detonating nuclear weapons, to be sent to a Pakistani businessman with ties to the Pakistani military.
* Seventy tons of heavy water, a component for nuclear reactors, were sent from China to Dubai. The shipping labels were then changed to mask the transaction, and 60 tons of the heavy water were transferred to India, for use in creating plutonium for the country’s atomic weapons program.
* In 1994 and 1995, two containers of gas centrifuge parts from the A.Q. Kahn’s nuclear labs were shipped through Dubai to Iran.
* A Dubai company ordered American-made impregnated alumina — a substance that can be used for making nerve gas ingredients — and tried to pass it along to an Iranian purchasing agent in violation of American export control laws.
* In 1996, the German government listed six firms in Dubai as front companies for Iranian efforts to import arms and nuclear technology.
“We must ensure critical U.S. infrastructure remains in U.S. hands. To those who say my views smack of protectionism, I say: America is worth protecting,” Hunter said.
CNN reported that Hunter plans to introduce a bill that would require Dubai Ports World and other foreign companies to give up their claims on critical infrastructure in the United States.