INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
LIBYA: A MAJOR SALE AT LAST
During the 1970s and 1980s, Libya’s dictator Muammar Qaddafi sought nuclear weapons. He contributed money to Pakistan’s nascent nuclear weapons effort to help cash-starved Pakistan. In return, A.Q. Khan, the leader of Pakistan’s covert gas centrifuge effort, raised the possibility of selling Libya centrifuge technology in January 1984.1 Qaddafi’s scientists were startled by the offer, fearing that Libya did not have the physical or scientific infrastructure to take it up.2 This may help explain why around that same time, Qaddafi recruited a European gas centrifuge expert to come to Libya and develop centrifuges.3 Fired from the German URENCO contractor MAN New Technologies in Munich,4 the expert brought his own equipment and designs to Tripoli in an effort to develop a gas centrifuge.5 He left Libya in 1992 without ever getting one to work.6
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