Israel has accused North Korea of covertly supplying at least half a dozen Middle Eastern countries with nuclear technology or conventional arms.
The allegation was made on Saturday at an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna, where world powers urged the North to stop reactivating its nuclear weapons program.
“The Middle East remains on the receiving end of the DPRK’s [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] reckless activities,” Israeli delegate David Danieli told the meeting.
“At least half a dozen countries in the region ... have become eager recipients” of the North’s black market supplies of conventional arms or nuclear technology, he said — mostly “through black market and covert network channels.”
While he did not name any of the suspected countries, he appeared to be referring in part to Iran and Syria, which are both under IAEA investigation, and Libya, which scrapped its rudimentary weapons program after revealing it in 2003.
US officials have said that North Korea’s customer list for missiles or related components going back to the mid-1980s also include Egypt, the UAE and Yemen.
The Israeli accusations came a day after US chief nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill returned from North Korea where he had hoped to salvage a disarmament pact.
The North recently reversed a process to dismantle its nuclear facilities, as it agreed to do under the pact. The US State Department said on Friday that the communist nation was continuing work to restore those facilities even after Hill’s visit.
US officials and outside experts say North Korea has sold its military goods to at least 18 countries, mainly in Africa and the Middle East and in mostly covert transactions.
North Korea’s catalog has included ballistic missiles and related components, conventional weapons such as mobile rocket launchers, and nuclear technology.
US government officials have said that A.Q. Khan — the Pakistani scientist who confessed in 2004 to running an illegal nuclear market — had close connections with North Korea, trading in equipment, facilitating international deals for components and swapping nuclear know-how.
In 2004 then-CIA director George Tenet testified before Congress that North Korea had shown a willingness “to sell complete systems and components” for missile programs that have allowed other governments to acquire longer-range missiles.
Concerns about Iran focus on its refusal to scrap a secretly developed uranium enrichment program that could be retooled to produce fissile warhead material. Tehran is also suspected of hiding past efforts to develop a nuclear weapons program and of basing its Shahab-3 missile on a North Korean model.
Iranian officials say the missile has a range of 2,012km — enabling a strike on Israel and most of the Middle East. US and other intelligence says Tehran has studied modifying Shahabs to carry a nuclear warhead — something Iran denies.
Rejecting any suggestion of North Korean aid, Iran’s chief IAEA delegate Ali Ashgar Soltanieh said that Iran’s nuclear and missile programs were developed “without the help of any other country.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS