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FORMER SOVIET UNION
CAMBRIDGE, U.K.-It has long been a nightmare scenario for Western observers: socalled rogue nations luring impoverished nuclear experts from ex-Soviet republics to help them develop weapons. Now Eduard Shevardnadze, president of the Republic of Georgia, is putting some flesh on the fears. At a press conference last month, Shevardnadze claimed that several nuclear physicists from a breakaway region in the Caucasus are working in Iran. Western experts are also worried about the security of nuclear materials in the region.
A nonproliferation official at the US. Department of Energy calls Shevardnadze's remarks "credible," adding "it is one of our biggest fears." Other analysts want to see more evidence but acknowledge that the lab and the region the physicists hail from-the Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology (SIPT) in Abkhazia, an isolated republic on the Black Sea-are a long-standing proliferation headache.
In its Soviet heyday,...