China has latest data on N-bomb, US spies reveal

Shebly had introduced a Bill severely restricting scientific exchanges with China, Russia and other "sensitive countries" like India and Pakistan.

Nuclear weapon physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California Ray F Kidder said the combined data obtained by the Chinese is equivalent to a scientific blueprint for nuclear bombs.

The massive revelations about China’s ability to get the intelligence data and use it to modernise its nuclear arsenal to American standards doesnot seem to have the slightest effect on US President Bill Clinton’s determination to pursue a "strategic partnership" with China, analysts said.

Meanwhile, New York Times reported today said virtually every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal was compromised after a scientist suspected of spying for China improperly transferred huge amounts of secret data.

Quoting government and laboratory officials, the times said millions of lines of computer code that approximate how US atomic warheads work were downloaded from a secure computer system at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The officials told the newspaper that Taiwanese-born scientist Wen Ho Lee then improperly transferred the files to widely accessible computer network at the lab where they were stored under other file names.

The report said the alleged information transfer occurred mostly in 1994 and 1995.