According to author Shyam Bhatia, who is said to have known former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto well:

FORMER Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment — a route to making a nuclear weapon — to seal a missile deal with Pyongyang…

The claim is based on conversations… with Ms Bhutto in 2003, [who] was slain in December [2007] while campaigning to win back the prime minister’s post.

The account, if verified, could advance the timeline for North Korea’s interest in uranium enrichment.

This comes on the heels of AQ Khan implying the Pakistani government had knowledge of his nuclear proliferation to North Korea and that he was being made a scapegoat. When the U.S. confronted North Korea about its highly enriched uranium (HEU) program in October 2002, the (pseudo) progress made earlier that year fell apart. The Pakistani government, of course, is denying the claim that Bhutto proliferated anything to North Korea. However, Shyam Bhatia has some credibility on regional nuclear issues:

George Perkovich, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, knows Bhatia and cited his book in Dr Perkovich’s own study of the Indian program. “The work he did on the Indian nuclear program has held up really well,” Dr Perkovich said.

Bhutto allegedly smuggled in the information into North Korea on CDs in exchange for missile technology:

In his book, Bhatia writes that Ms Bhutto brought up the North Korea visit during a discussion in 2003 about her difficulties with Pakistan’s military.

[. . .]

At the time, Pakistan was in desperate need of new missile technology that would counter improvements in India’s missiles. Ms Bhutto said she was asked to carry “critical nuclear data” to Pyongyang as part of a barter deal.

“Before leaving Islamabad she shopped for an overcoat with the ‘deepest possible pockets’ into which she transferred CDs containing the scientific data about uranium enrichment that the North Koreans wanted,” Bhatia writes.

Bhatia said Ms Bhutto did not tell him how many CDs she carried or to whom she gave them in Pyongyang.

All this seems to be entirely possible, and meshed well with the recent claims by AQ Khan. On the other hand, it could also be part of a conspiracy to discredit the legacy of Bhutto and her followers.

Unfortunately, under current conditions, this new information is unlikely to have any effect on the Six-Party Talks process, where North Korea is probably about to get away with submitting a less than honest declaration that will probably be accepted by the Bush administration.