LIBYA’S plea last month for UN inspectors to help dismantle its embryonic nuclear weapons programme has lifted the veil on a vast and shadowy black market in nuclear technology and expertise.
On 19 December, the Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammer Gadaffi admitted that his country had embarked on a programme to develop nuclear weapons – an effort he now wanted to end. Libya was then visited by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, including the agency’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei.
What worried ElBaradei most was not Libya’s nuclear programme per se, but the extent of the black market in nuclear information and equipment…
