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Israel tried to persuade North Korea on weapons: report
Tokyo (AFP) Dec 6, 2007 Israel held secret but unsuccessful talks with North Korea in the 1990s in a bid to persuade the communist state to stop exporting missiles to Arab countries, a Japanese newspaper reported Thursday. Israel in September this year launched an air strike in Syria which Western media reports said targeted a nuclear facility developed with North Korea. But a decade and a half ago, Israel quietly sent negotiators to Pyongyang out of growing concern about North Korea's military cooperation with Arab states, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, quoting former officials in Jerusalem. North Korea initiated the contact in 1992 through a Korean-American jeweller and sought Israeli investment in a gold mine project in the impoverished communist state, the Yomiuri quoted former Israeli diplomat Eytan Bentsur as saying. The gold mine was badly flooded, but Israel offered to invest 30 million dollars and potentially another one billion dollars as part of a deal, he was quoted as saying. But the team was alarmed that North Korea denied military links with Israel's Arab neighbours and that Pyongyang was holding parallel talks with both Israel's foreign ministry and Mossad spy agency, the report said. Doubting North Korea's commitment, Israel's then premier Yitzhak Rabin shut off the negotiations in August 1993, two years before he was assassinated, the newspaper said. Rabin also took the decision because negotiations were stepping up between US president Bill Clinton's administration and North Korea, he was quoted as saying. Bentsur said that the Israelis found North Korea bizarre as they were offered live fish to eat and attended one of North Korea's famous synchronised mass spectacles. "It was very surreal," he was quoted as saying. He said the Israelis were particularly concerned by North Korea's alleged exports of ballistic missiles at the time to Egypt, Syria, Libya and Iraq. North Korea, one of the few non-Muslim states which has no relations with Israel, is believed to rely on weapons exports as one of its top money-makers. The communist state last year tested an atom bomb for the first time but has since entered a US-backed disarmament-for-aid deal. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com Learn about missile defense at SpaceWar.com All about missiles at SpaceWar.com Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com
North Korean nuclear declaration must be credible: US envoy
Beijing (AFP) Dec 6, 2007US envoy Christopher Hill said Thursday that North Korea must make credible declarations about all its nuclear programmes, as doubts emerged over whether a year-end deadline would be met. |
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