June 2, 1981: Israel Representative to UN Complains about Pakistan Nuclear Program

Israel’s permanent representative to the UN, Yehuda Blum, tells the UN General Assembly that “there is abundant evidence indicating that [Pakistan] is producing nuclear weapons.” He adds that “at the Engineering Research Labs… Pakistan is secretly constructing a plant for the production of weapons-grade enriched uranium by centrifuges” based on a technology “stolen from the URENCO plant in the Netherlands.” He also says that Pakistan has established front companies in 14 countries to acquire components, and that Pakistan is close to building a cascade of at least 1,000 centrifuges. In addition, the Pakistanis intend to build more than 10,000 of them, “which in turn could produce about 150 kg of enriched uranium a year, sufficient for seven nuclear explosive devices every year.” Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will write that this information is “what the US had known for several years but had chosen not to share with the rest of the world.” [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 85-86]