No proliferation risk in zircon sale to Iran, says UK
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, Jan 9, IRNA
Iran-Zirconium Silicate
Britain's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) insisted Monday that there were no proliferation risks over sending a consignment of zirconium silicate to Iran that was wrongfully held up in Bulgaria.
"The DTI informed the Bulgarian authorities that the goods as described were not controlled under UK export control," a spokeswoman confirmed.
She said that as the hafnium content of the sand was only 1.1 percent by weight that the consignment did not therefore require a license and that the case 'raised no WMD end-use concerns'.
The clarification came as a local weekly reported Sunday that defense experts were demanding a tightening of export regulations on potential weapon materials because they claimed the cargo of radioactive material could be used for nuclear weapons.
The report in Observer comes one month after IRNA revealed that the British government had already carried out checks confirming that the consignment was legitimate after it was stopped in Bulgaria last August.
The timing also followed the Guardian, the Observer's sister paper, publishing recycled claims about Iran's nuclear program last week, which Professor John Sloboda of the Oxford Research Group suggested were part of a 'misinformation campaign'.
"It is a softening up process for an attack by Israel or America," the professor of Psychology at the University of Keele, central England, told IRNA.
In a written reply to parliament in December, Britain's Minister for Europe Douglas Alexander told MPs that necessary checks confirmed in October that the 'cargo was legal'.
At the time, the DTI also said the government was aware of the background about the export and that the case was 'no cause for concern'.
2220/345/2322/1412
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