Israel: North Korea supplying weapons of mass destruction to six Mideast states

Last update - 15:08 04/10/2008       

North Korea supplying weapons of mass destruction to six Mideast states

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

 

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

 

Israel 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.

"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 meeting.

 

"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 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. The demand is at the heart of disputes that have crippled its denuclearization deal with five powers.