About Us

IMRA
IMRA
IMRA

 

Subscribe

Search


...................................................................................................................................................


Saturday, October 4, 2008
Israel: North Korea supplying weapons to six Mideast states

Israel: North Korea supplying weapons to six Mideast states
By Reuters Last update - 15:08 04/10/2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1026281.html

Israel accused North Korea on Saturday of providing weapons of mass
destruction to at least six countries in the Middle East that ignored
arms-control commitments.

Israel's delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spoke as
the 145-nation assembly of the United Nations nuclear watchdog adopted a
resolution unanimously urging North Korea to reverse steps it has taken to
revive its dormant atom bomb program.

Israel itself is the target of two hotly disputed Arab-sponsored draft
resolutions in the assembly urging it to give up its alleged nuclear arms
monopoly in the Middle East, join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and
accept full IAEA inspections.

Israel said there were six Middle Eastern countries which had obtained the
means produce doomsday weapons and ballistic missiles covertly from North
Korea while ignoring commitments as members of the NPT and other
arms-control regimes.

"At a time when the international community concentrates on North Korea's
nuclear activities and its non-compliance with safeguards agreements, the
Middle East is at the receiving end of North Korea's reckless practices,"
Israeli envoy David Danieli told the global meeting in Vienna.

"North Korea has long become a source of proliferation of dangerous weapons
of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in the Middle East," he said.

"At least half a dozen countries in the region who do not even pay lip
service to control regimes and are acting in bad faith regarding their
stated policy and their undertakings regarding non-proliferation conventions
have become eager recipients of North Korea mostly through black market and
covert network channels," Danieli said, but did not name the six nations.

Western intelligence officials and non-proliferation experts have said that
Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq under Saddam Hussein were believed to have
received North Korean military aid, some applicable to mass-destruction
weaponry, in the past.

"No due attention is paid to this dark aspect of North Korean behavior which
has become a matter of great concern to my government and others," Danieli
said.

He said there was growing evidence that such states were "emulating the
dangerous unlawful practices" of North Korea, which left the NPT in 2003 and
developed atom bombs.

"[We] call the attention of the international community to these dangerous
developments and their consequences," he said.
Iran is under IAEA investigation over intelligence allegations of secret
atomic bomb research. Syria is under IAEA scrutiny over U.S. reports it had
nearly completed a plutonium-producing reactor before Israeli warplanes
bombed the site a year ago.

Iran and Syria, adversaries of Israel, deny the allegations. Libya scrapped
a covert nuclear arms program in 2003.

U.S. envoy Chris Hill ended three days of meetings in North Korea on Friday
meant to salvage the collapsing denuclearization deal, calling the talks
substantive but not saying if he swayed Pyongyang to give up plans to
restart its nuclear complex.

The resolution passed by the IAEA assembly underlined the need for
denuclearization fully verifiable by IAEA inspectors - a demand resisted by
Pyongyang and at the heart of disputes that have crippled its
denuclearization deal with five powers.

Search For An Article

....................................................................................................

Contact Us

POB 982 Kfar Sava
Tel 972-9-7604719
Fax 972-3-7255730
email:imra@netvision.net.il IMRA is now also on Twitter
http://twitter.com/IMRA_UPDATES

image004.jpg (8687 bytes)