Libya refined a small amount of plutonium in a secret nuclear program that extended from the 1980s until the end of last year, the UN nuclear watchdog said in a report obtained by AFP. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report outlines a more advanced Libyan program than had previously been shown publicly since Libya agreed in December to abandon efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. But the significance of the Libyan program may be what it reveals about a global nuclear black market that was supplying the north African country, as well as Iran and North Korea, with sensitive nuclear technology. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is to visit Libya Monday and Tuesday, as revelations from Tripoli are helping unravel the international smuggling ring that was run by the disgraced former head of Pakistan's nuclear program Abdul Qadeer Khan. The report, to be reviewed when the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, meets at its headquarters in Vienna on March 8, also revealed that Libya had designs for nuclear weapons. Plutonium, as well as enriched uranium, is a key ingredient for making an atomic bomb. The report said that "starting in the early 1980s and continuing until the end of 2003, Libya imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of nuclear activities which it had failed to report to the agency as required under its safeguards agreement." These included "failure to declare the import of (...) uranium compounds" and "failure to declare the fabrication and irradiation of uranium targets and the subsequent processing including the separation of a small amount of plutonium." Libya was previously believed to only be pursuing uranium enrichment. Andrew Koch of the specialist defense publication Jane's Defense Weekly told AFP by telephone from Washington that the plutonium made it look as if the Libyans "were pursuing a second route to the bomb," although the amounts of plutonium were small. He said it would be "big news" if Libya were trying to make large amounts of plutonium, as you need four or five kilograms of it to make a nuclear bomb but Libya apparently did not have that capability. The same for uranium. "I don't think it alters the basic assessment that they were still years away from being able to produce significant quantities of uranium," Gary Samore of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies said. He said the report showed that Libya had revived its program in 1995, aided by Khan's network, and was buying a lot of centrifuge machines to be linked together for uranium enrichment but had not started producing highly enriched uranium. The foreign connections are what remains intriguing. Libya acknowledged that it had received documents for "nuclear weapons design and fabrication from a foreign source," said the report. It said Tripoli "relied heavily on support from foreign sources" for the program. The IAEA said it was now investigating to ensure "that the sensitive nuclear technologies and equipment found in Libya have not proliferated further." Malaysian police said Friday that Khan had sold nuclear centrifuge parts to Iran in the mid-1990s and sent enriched uranium to Libya in 2001. Meanwhile, citizens of Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Turkey were named in a Malaysian police report Friday as alleged middlemen involved in the nuclear arms black market. And the IAEA has given Switzerland a list naming two Swiss companies and 15 Swiss nationals suspected of helping advance secret nuclear programs in Iran and Libya, the Swiss government said Thursday. The IAEA said that Libya's failures to report on its nuclear program in accordance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) shows that Tripoli was "in breach of its obligation to comply with the provisions of the safeguards agreement." This could be enough for the IAEA to refer Libya to the UN Security Council. But this would probably be merely a pro forma measure, and not lead to sanctions, since Libya is actively working with the IAEA, as well as Britain and the United States with whom it struck the agreement on December 19 to disarm. The IAEA is the lead agency for verifying the nuclear disarmament. IAEA inspectors have mainly been compiling inventories while British and US teams have been carrying out the actual removing and destroying of equipment and documents, which have included the blueprints for nuclear weapons.