Don’t Bomb Iran

Associated Press story found here
Congo Denies Alleged Uranium Shipment To Iran From 2005

KINSHASA, Congo (AP)–The Congolese government Monday denied that a uranium
shipment left its territory last year bound for Iran.

“It’s a great big lie,” government spokesman Henri Mova Sakanyi said. “All our
nuclear activities are under the control of the International Atomic Energy
Agency.”

The U.K. Sunday Times newspaper reported Saturday that a smuggled shipment of
uranium 238 was intercepted in Tanzania last October. The report cited a
“senior Tanzanian customs official” and an unpublished report by the U.N. from
July 18.

The article said the shipment came from a closed mine in Lubumbashi, Congo, then
was driven via Zambia into Tanzania, and uncovered during a scan at the port of
Dar es Salaam while awaiting shipment by boat to the Iranian port of Bandar
Abbas.

“Anyone who knows about uranium knows that it is not exported in raw form in
trucks. It must be treated and purified, and we don’t enrich uranium in Congo,”
Sakanyi said.

The paper cited a Tanzanian customs official, who it did not identify by name,
as saying that the uranium was hidden inside a cargo of 50-kilogram drums of
coltan, a mineral used to make computer chips.

The Sunday Times said the uranium was suspected of being extracted illegally
from the Shinkolobwe mine, which was closed in 1961.

U.N. spokesman Jean-Tobias Okala in Kinshasa said Monday he couldn’t confirm the
uranium shipment. The large U.N. peacekeeping force is overseeing elections in
Congo and Okala said tracking of any such shipments would be outside of his
jurisdiction.

Uranium 238 can be used to breed plutonium, which is used both in nuclear
warheads and as fuel for nuclear reactors.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires
08-07-061242ET
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