A few days after Libya's historic pledge on December 19 to abandon the quest for nuclear weapons, Libyan intelligence officials met with visiting US diplomats to announce that a sizable quantity of nuclear equipment purchased is missing. The news was broken today by The Washington Post. The equipment -- sensitive components of machines used to enrich uranium -- had been ordered from black-market suppliers months earlier and was now long overdue. According to US officials present at the meeting, the Libyans wanted to prepare the Americans for the possibility that more illicit nuclear shipments could suddenly appear on Tripoli's docks.