- Iran has increased efforts to obtain technological assistance
from China and North Korea for its missile and weapons of mass destruction
programs, the United States has concluded.
-
- U.S. officials said the threat of imminent war with Iraq
has spurred Teheran's efforts to complete its missile and WMD projects
to deter future threats from Washington. The officials said Iran is focusing
on completing facilities that could produce weapons-grade plutonium.
-
- U.S. officials said Iran has obtained significant missile
and WMD assistance from China and North Korea over the last five years,
Middle East Newsline reported. The officials said North Korea is believed
to have helped Iran with two new nuclear facilities reported on late last
year. They are a heavy-water plant and a centrifuge facility in central
Iran.
-
- "The Iranians are very active in seeking assistance
from North Korea and China," Undersecretary of State John Bolton said.
"Although the current focus is on Iraq, and to a lesser extent on
North Korea, Iran remains a very serious problem, one that we're committed
to addressing, and that we are trying to address by preventing the Iranian
government from acquiring these capabilities in nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons and long-range missiles."
-
- Bolton said in an interview to the CNBC network that
Iran plays a leading role in the Bush administration's agenda. The undersecretary
said he has spent many hours with Russian officials in an attempt to stop
Moscow's aid to Teheran's missile and WMD programs.
-
- Bolton did not cite U.S. efforts to persuade China and
North Korea to halt the supply of missile and WMD technology to Teheran.
He said much of the efforts have taken place in the framework of multilateral
export-control regimes.
-
- Officials said China and North Korea have helped Iran
build an infrastructure for the development and production of the intermediate-range
Shihab-3 missile as well as a cruise missile. They said Iran has offered
the Shihab-3 to Libya.
-
- "Iran has only very rudimentary countermeasure capabilities,
and continued Chinese and Russian assistance will be needed in this area,"
Michael Eisenstadt, a senior fellow of the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy said. "This may explain why Iran is currently buying missiles
in such large numbers -- for the foreseeable future, saturation may be
the only reliable Iranian countermeasure to sophisticated enemy missile
defenses."
-
- Eisenstadt said China is helping Iran develop several
models of cruise missiles. They include an extended-range variant of the
Chinese Silkworm missile.
|
