An army officer (right) advises a policeman of the tribal police force on how to use a gun during a training session at Shah Kass area in the Khyber Agency of Pakistan. (AFP)

Vienna, Feb. 23: Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan presided over a nuclear smuggling operation so brazen that the government weapons laboratory he ran distributed a glossy sales brochure offering sophisticated technology and shipped some of its most sensitive equipment directly from Pakistan to rogue countries such as Libya and North Korea.

The brochure, with photos of Khan and an array of weapons on the cover, listed a complete range of equipment for separating nuclear fuel from uranium. Also for sale were Khan’s “consultancy and advisory services,” and conventional weapons such as missiles, according to a copy of the brochure provided to the Los Angeles Times.

Although Pakistan has stopped Khan, the brochure is among the emerging details of the scope of his enterprise. They raise new questions about how far Khan’s network spread nuclear knowhow and why authorities didn’t move against it sooner.

The extent of the ring remains unknown, and even some of Khan’s suppliers might not have known they were involved. Inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and intelligence and law enforcement authorities on three continents are trying to reconstruct what they consider the worst nuclear proliferation network in history, and to dismantle it.

Top diplomats in Vienna and senior US officials say they are urgently trying to determine whether blueprints for a nuclear warhead and designs to build the device, which were sold to Libya, and highly sensitive data and equipment shipped to Iran and North Korea, might have spread beyond those countries. In addition, investigators have not been able to account for much of the equipment the network bought.

“Who knows where it has gone?” said a senior US intelligence official, who described the Bush administration as deeply worried. “How many other people are there? How widespread was it, and how much information has spread?”

Questions also are being asked about whether the US missed opportunities to stop Khan.

The Pakistani scientist’s full-service nuclear trafficking network operated for nearly two decades, often under the cover of his government lab, even as western intelligence agencies grew more suspicious of him and senior US officials repeatedly protested to Pakistan.

CIA director George J. Tenet said this month that the agency penetrated elements of the smuggling ring in recent years, but needed proof to stop it. Other administration officials and outside experts suggested, however, that at least parts of the enterprise could have been shut down.

“If you have penetrated the system, why not stop it before Libya got the weapons design?” a senior European diplomat based in Vienna asked. “There is no limitation on a copying machine.”

Diplomats and officials in Europe and Washington who are involved in the inquiry or have been briefed on it spoke mostly on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing and politically sensitive.