The US is unaware of a new Iran-North Korea nuclear project reported by a Japanese newspaper but is looking into it, US officials said on Thursday.
The Sankei Shimbun, citing an unidentified military source, reported this week North Korea and Iran -- part of what US President George W. Bush has called an "axis of evil" -- were working on a project to build an underground factory in the communist state to produce machinery for enriching uranium.
Uranium is a key ingredient in nuclear weapons and Washington has accused both Iran and the reclusive North of pursuing nuclear weapons programs.
"I have not seen anything to substantiate that," one senior US official said of the Sankei report.
"We saw the report and we're looking into it," he told reporters.
Another senior US official said the newspaper report was the first time he had heard allegations of a North Korea-Iran collaboration but he was skeptical.
"I would think there would have been some indication in the past if indeed there was such a relationship. If there is any truth to this it's a little surprising that it would come out like this," he said.
The newspaper said the two countries agreed to jointly build a plant to make a centrifugal separator in Kusong, 40km northwest of Anju, a site known for nuclear development by Pyongyang.
It said that under the accord, reached during the visit by a senior Iranian military officer to Pyongyang in late January, both nations would use the machinery, with Iran planning to import it as "industrial goods" through a third country, the Sankei said.
North Korea acknowledges a program for producing plutonium, one type of fuel for nuclear bombs. It has denied US charges it is also producing highly-enriched uranium, another type of nuclear bomb fuel.
A global nuclear black market was revealed last month when Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, disclosed he had sold nuclear secrets and technologies to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
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