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Iran-Russia: Russia Is Not Providing WMD Technology, Official Says Contrary to U.S. concerns, Russia is not helping Iran develop nuclear weapons, a Russian official said, calling on the United States to provide concrete evidence that Russia is exporting sensitive technologies to Iran (see GSN, May 16). “We have adopted comprehensive measures to exclude the merest possibility of missile technology transfers,” said Nikolai Shumkov, head of military missile technology at the Russian Space Agency. U.S. officials “said they were satisfied with these measures. Then suddenly we get a new flurry of complaints from them, and we don’t know why,” he said. Russia, which is helping build a civilian nuclear plant in Iran, has said all trade with the country is in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. A Bush administration official, however, said this week that the United States has “solid reason” to believe Russia is helping Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. The Bush administration has said it will discuss Russian assistance to Iran during next week’s summit between Russian and U.S. Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, at which the presidents are expected to sign a new arms reduction treaty (see GSN, May 14). A U.S.-Russian team established five years ago to address the issue of Iran recommended tightening Russian export controls, which Russia did and calmed U.S. fears, Shumkov said (see GSN, May 7). Then the White House began expressing concern again in recent months, even though Bush administration officials have acknowledged that Russia is not leaking nuclear information, he said. A U.S. diplomat said last week that Russian entities might be exporting sensitive technologies to Iran without the knowledge of the upper levels of Russian government. “There may be some willful criminality down the chain of command within the Ministry of Atomic Energy and some of the institutes and enterprises under its aegis,” he said. “Maybe some people are doing this without sanction from above. But we do think they are taking inordinate risks” (Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, May 17).
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