[Egypt seems to have a serious interest in nuclear weapons… and may even have a secret weapons program… but the USA does not believe this. Then again… the USA does not believe many things which are so… The USA chooses to be blind to whatever happens to suit it at the time.

I have put up another post previously about Egypt’s Secret Nuclear program… Jan]

Egypt experiments ‘unrelated to nukes’

—————————————————————————Janine Zacharia, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 10, 2005
—————————————————————————The US does not believe Egypt is secretly developing nuclear weapons despite a finding by the International Atomic Agency that Egypt has been conducting experiments the UN nuclear watchdog group says could be a sign of a hidden nuclear weapons programs.

“From what we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem it’s a weapons program but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more there,” a senior US administration official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. “We don’t know of it. We don’t have any reason to think there is [a program].”

The official said the US had not raised the issue with the Egyptians since AP quoted a diplomat last week saying the Egyptians “tried to produce various components of uranium” without declaring it to the IAEA in accordance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Egypt denies it has a nuclear weapons program and says it conducts small-scale nuclear programs for medical and research purposes. Last week’s news item came a few months after an earlier report that the IAEA had discovered plutonium particles near an Egyptian nuclear facility.

The senior US official said the US was letting the IAEA handle the matter. “We’ve let the [IAEA] run through its normal procedure. They haven’t come up with anything super troubling,” he said. “Particularly with all the sensitivity on Iran, we’re just letting the [IAEA] play it out.”

The US and Israel both say Iran is developing a secret nuclear weapons program, but the IAEA has yet to declare such a program is in the works. The issue has therefore not been referred to the UN Security Council as the US had hoped. Last week Iran gave the IAEA permission to take environmental samples from a suspect military site where the US and others believe Iran is conducting covert nuclear tests.
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Source: Jerusalem Post
URL: This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagena…br>