Don’t Bomb Iran

Condoleezza Rice played down a report in a British newspaper that North Korea was helping Iran prepare a nuclear weapons test. “I don’t see that it’s based on anything that I’ve seen,” Rice said of the report published in The Daily Telegraph, which received worldwide coverage in recent days.  Oddly, the Telegraph story cited unnamed European defence and intelligence officials as sources, so logically, either such Euro intelligence is not being shared with Condi, or there is no such intelligence and the Telegraph is just beating war drums again. Excerpt from full AFP report below.

Rice dismisses report North Korea helping Iran prepare nuke test

Wed Jan 24, 5:34 PM ET

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to play down a report in a British newspaper that North Korea was helping Iran prepare an eventual nuclear test explosion.

“I don’t see that it’s based on anything that I’ve seen,” Rice said of the report published in The Daily Telegraph.

“I don’t see what it’s based on,” she told reporters accompanying her to a Lebanon donors conference in Paris.

Citing an unnamed senior European defence official, the newspaper said that North Korea has agreed to share all the data it received from its nuclear test last year as both countries face Western pressures over the development of their own nuclear programmes.

“The Iranians are working closely with the North Koreans to study the results of last year’s North Korean nuclear bomb test,” the European defence official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

“We have identified increased activity at all of Iran’s nuclear facilities since the turn of the year … All the indications are that the Iranians are working hard to prepare for their own underground nuclear test.”

The official also said that North Korea had invited a team of Iranian scientists to study the results of last year’s underground nuclear test.