News
Friday, July 08, 2011
It’s totally baseless and preposterous: FO
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office termed the report of Pakistani generals taking bribes in exchange for helping smuggle nuclear technology to North Korea in the late 1990s as “preposterous.” The Pakistan Army declined to comment on the report, but Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua told reporters at a weekly press briefing that “such stories have a habit of recurring and my only comment is that this is totally baseless and preposterous.” Despite Pakistani protests, Western intelligence officials said they believed the letter was authentic, the Post reported. It appears to be signed by North Korean Workers Party Secretary Jon Byong, the newspaper said, and other details match classified information previously unrevealed to the public. The newspaper said it was unable to independently verify the account. Former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf wrote in his memoir that Pakistan and North Korea were involved in government-to-government cash transfers for North Korean ballistic missile technology in the late 1990s, but he insisted there was no official policy of reverse transfer of nuclear technology to Pyongyang. reuters
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk