ARAB-TURKISH RELATIONS - June 11 - Businessman Denies Nuclear Goods Claim.

Turkish businessman Selim Alguadis, alleged to have supplied sophisticated electrical goods to Libya's secret nuclear weapons project, says he has no idea his products are destined for that country. He says his company's products are in free circulation and could be purchased by end-users, contractors or distributors, adding: "It is conceivable that they found their way to Libya. For example, we found that our power supplies had been purchased by the American Embassy in Afghanistan for their own use. We did not sell these to this customer". (Alguadis was cited in a public report from the Malaysian inspector-general of police into the Malaysian end of a Pakistani-led clandestine network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear weapons technologies, designs and expertise. He had, the report alleged, "supplied electrical cabinets and power supplier-voltage regulators to Libya"). Alguadis says he has on several occasions met Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist who has admitted transmitting nuclear expertise to the three countries. Khan was acting as technology consultant to the Pakistani president and "the relationship has been purely social", Alguadis says. The Malaysian authorities have detained a Sri Lankan, Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir, described by Pres. Bush as the network's CFO and main money launderer. Tahir owns a computer supply store in Dubai. Alquadis says: "The only Tahir I know in Dubai is a gentleman who owns computer shops and two to three years ago I bought myself a laptop from his store". Turkish equipment, including centrifuge motors and frequency converters destined for Libya's now abandoned nuclear weapons programme, turned up in Tripoli in March 2004 aboard a ship that had sailed from Dubai in 2003. Alguadis says his company, EKA, did make frequency converters but had not exported any to Dubai in 2003, and it made no motors of any kind).