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06/26/2005:

"Japan Suspects Iran - N.Korea Missile Link"

Japan is worried that technology for a long-range cruise missile that can carry nuclear warheads may have been leaked to North Korea from Iran, a Japanese daily said on Sunday.

At issue is technology used in cruise missiles known as Kh-55s that Ukraine exported to Iran in 2001 under former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, the Sankei Shimbun daily said, quoting Japanese government and ruling party sources.

``They are linked by a network beneath the surface regarding the development of weapons of mass destruction,'' Sankei quoted a Defense Ministry source as saying about Iran and North Korea.

The possible leak of technology was conveyed to Japan by a U.S. intelligence agency, said Sankei, a conservative daily.

Developed in the late 1970s in the former Soviet Union, the Kh-55s have a range of 3,000 km (1,864 miles), long enough to hit any part of Japan if deployed by North Korea, Sankei said.

Ukraine said in March that cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads had been ``smuggled'' out of the country to Iran, but denied a report they had been exported with official sanction.
Full: nytimes.com/reuters

You can just hear the wheels in motion...