Search the Internet          Tips

US warns Pakistan against deals with N Korea

The United States on Tuesday warned Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf that any cooperation with North Korea in the nuclear field would be 'inappropriate and have consequences', including imposition of sanctions.

"I have made it clear to him [Musharraf] that any sort of contact between Pakistan and North Korea we believe would be improper, inappropriate, and would have consequences," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters on Monday en route to Washington from Mexico.

He said US sanctions are required by law against countries that engage in weapons proliferation.

Powell said General Musharraf has assured him that there are no further contacts between Pakistan and North Korea concerning transfers of nuclear weapons technology to Pyongyang.

Powell's comments came in response to news reports of secret Pakistani cooperation with North Korea in Pyongyang's development of uranium-based nuclear weapons.

The New York Times on Sunday quoted officials as saying the technology transfers were being made as recently as July.

According to the daily, US intelligence agencies have tracked a Pakistani cargo aircraft that landed at a North Korean airfield and was loaded with ballistic missile parts.

American spy satellites recorded images of the American-built C-130 aircraft making the sortie in July, it said.

American intelligence agencies watched silently as Pakistan's air fleet later made several sorties to North Korea, it added.

While Pyongyang provided Islamabad with missile parts it needs to build a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching strategic sites in India, Pakistan provided North Korea with many of the designs for gas centrifuges and much of the machinery it needs to make highly enriched uranium for the communist nation's latest nuclear weapons project, the daily said.

Terming the report 'baseless, motivated and malicious', Pakistan on Monday said it has a strong export control regime in place, and was committed that it would not export any sensitive technology to Third World countries.

PTI

Tell us what you think of this report