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.”
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