A Malaysian company controlled by the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is being investigated for possibly supplying machine parts bound for Libya's nuclear weapons programs, the national police chief said.
Inspector General of Police Mohamed Bakri Omar said Scomi Precision Engineering Sdn Bhd, or SCOPE, a subsidiary of Scomi Group Bhd, built centrifuge components that international intelligence agencies say were headed for Libya late last year.
The revelations are part of widening international investigations into the trafficking of technology by Pakistani scientists to Libya, Iran and North Korea, which have uncovered a complex black market to help aspiring powers acquire nuclear weapons.
Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium for a variety of purposes, including weapons production. They are also used in many other industries for non-nuclear purposes.
Malaysian Special Branch police began the investigation after the CIA and Britain's MI6 informed them last November that boxes of machine parts bearing SCOPE's name were found in five containers seized in a ship off Italy last October headed for Libya, police said in a statement yesterday.
Scomi is a mid-sized oil and gas company controlled by Kamaluddin Abdullah, the only son of the prime minister, which supplies specialized tools for the oil and gas, automotive and general components industries.
Mohamed Bakri said the foreign intelligence services had informed Malaysian authorities that a Sri Lankan identified as B.S.A. Tahir had acted as a middleman in the centrifuge deal.
"Tahir and SCOPE are cooperating fully with the police in the investigations," Mohamed Bakri said, adding that Tahir was not being detained.
In a separate statement, Scomi said it had been contracted by Tahir to make "14 semi-finished components" for a Dubai-based company, Gulf Technical Industries. The company said Gulf Technical never identified its intended use of the components.
The deal was worth 13 million ringgit (US$3.4 million) and comprised four consignments that were shipped between December 2002 and August last year, the company said. SCOPE accepted the offer and built a factory outside Kuala Lumpur to fill the Dubai order.
Mohamed Bakri said "Tahir had offered a contract to SCOPE to prepare the components which was said to be a legitimate transaction."
Malaysia, a fast-developing, mostly Muslim country, is a signatory to international nuclear weapons nonproliferation treaties. It has a small government-backed program to develop nuclear technology for medical and industrial uses.
Stressing that the Malaysian-made equipment was parts only, Mohamed Bakri said "investigations carried out so far indicate that no company in Malaysia is capable of producing a complete centrifuge unit because it requires high technology and extensive expertise in the field of nuclear weapons."
The parts seized in the Libya shipment could also be used in petrochemical, water treatment and health applications such as molecular biology for protein separation, he said.
Bakri said that a "detailed investigation is continuing" in cooperation with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and pledged that it would be transparent.
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