In Georgia, trafficking of nuclear material reveals the flaws of the anti-proliferation
Hrant OHYANAN Sumbat Tonoyan and bore little resemblance to dangerous nuclear traffickers. Round face and paunchy belly, looking crestfallen, the two Armenian citizens have yet been arrested on this charge on March 11 in Tbilisi, after a storm in good and due form given to their hotel by a group of SWAT elite Georgian troops trained by the Americans. According to the British newspaper Guardian, the two men had pleaded guilty at their trial being held dans la capitale géorgienne, dans le plus grand secret. Abattus, l’ex-physicien nucléaire et l’homme d’affaires ruiné ont confessé en bloc, n’omettant rien de leur étrange et dangereuse équipée : oui, ils avaient pris le train la veille à Erevan, la capitale de l’Arménie, pour gagner la Géorgie voisine. Comme deux voyageurs de commerce sans histoire. A un détail près : un minuscule étui en cigarettes, qui renfermait un sachet de poudre verte entouré de lamelles de plomb isolantes. Soit dix-huit grammes d’uranium hautement enrichi à 89,4%, un taux « militaire » permettant d’alimenter directement en combustible une ogive nucléaire, et restés largement indétectés par les douaniers géorgiens. A qui cette précieuse marchandise était-elle destinée ? Un musulman, qui disait travailler « pour des gens très sérieux ». Il s’agissait en réalité d’un policier géorgien membre d’une unité antiterroriste, infiltré dans le milieu des trafiquants nucléaires. Il n’a eu le moment venu qu’à se grimer en acheteur potentiel, promettre 50 000 $ par gramme, avant de cueillir les apprentis trafiquants la main dans le sac, avec l’aide des SWAT. Pour la troisième fois en sept ans, de l’uranium hautement enrichi (UHE) était saisi sur le territoire géorgien, confirming the porous borders of the former Soviet Union, where 700 tons of HEU would be stored in hundreds of locations distributed throughout the territory of the former USSR. Ohyanan Tonoyan and were indeed lovers, but they received the sample of HEU from Russian hands of a very serious to him, and much more formidable Dadayan Garik, already arrested in Georgia in 2003 on similar grounds and released after two years. "Sell those already 18g, reportedly told the Dadayan intriguing, and I confide deliveries far more important . Through the cooperation of Moscow and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), headquartered in Vienna, the origin of uranium has been determined: the nuclear plant in Novosibirsk, Siberia, Dadayan where now found, boasted of having access to large quantities of HEU. The arrest of two feet Armenian nickel cast a chill in Washington. The U.S. spends two decades billions of dollars to avoid the stocks of nuclear material scattered across the former Soviet Republics falling " the wrong hands." In this case, the Islamist Al Qaeda, according to Western intelligence agencies, would seek to acquire the bomb. When he took office in January 2009, President Barack Obama had made anti-proliferation a priority of his mandate. The following April, during the Washington summit on nuclear security, he rallied fifty heads of state will secure all its stocks of nuclear material from the planet in four years. This good resolution of lead in the wing. The invasion of Georgia by Russian troops in August 2008 had already nullified attempts to secure the borders of the Caucasus, famous for volatile trafficking of nuclear material. Under a program developed by Washington and named the "second line of defense (SLD second line of defense), the United States had funded at $ 50 million fight against nuclear smuggling in Georgia trained 300 customs and police border with four posts, two ports and three airports. One question, since the summer of 2008, U.S. officials worried: the Georgian border Were they again secured? The transaction completed on 11 March more convincing the gullible: examine everything in the Caucasus on anti-proliferation. "These poor guys are they there because they are the only ones doing this kind of traffic , adds Matthew Bunn, a nuclear security expert at Harvard University, quoted by the Guardian, or because they are alone have been caught? "
0 comments:
Post a Comment