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China admits to nuclear cooperation with Iran |
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Sunday, 05 September 2004 |
Iran Focus
 Beijing, Sep. 1 - China today for the first time admitted to having cooperated with the Tehran regime on its nuclear program.
Zhang Huazhu, the Chinese deputy minister in charge of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, acknowledged that in the period between the late 1980s and early 1990s China cooperated with Iran in developing nuclear technology.
"At that time, Iran pledged that all these cooperation projects will be totally for peaceful uses and put under overall safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," Zhang told reporters.
Tehran had concealed critical parts of its nuclear projects from the international community for the past 18 years. The Iranian regime was forced to offer some grudging cooperation with the IAEA after the main Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin, revealed the location of top-secret nuclear sites in Iran.
Zhang stressed that Beijing had insisted that Iran should not transfer nuclear technology to any other country without prior Chinese consent.
In the run-up to a key meeting of the IAEA board of governors in Vienna on September 13, Iran’s Intelligence Minister Ali Younessi told reporters yesterday that dozens of Mojahedin activists had been arrested for exposing Iran’s nuclear secrets. A spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran denied yesterday that any of those arrested had any ties with disclosure of the mullahs’ secret drive to acquire nuclear arms. |
