Iran and the Ukraine...

This is from the Times of London....

For two days in London in February 2004, top American defence and intelligence officials huddled with senior officers from MI6. They were there to discuss Iraq’s missing weapons of mass destruction with General Ihor Smeshko, head of the Ukrainian secret service, but he also had some riveting information to pass on about Iran.

The Iranian regime, Smeshko revealed, was pestering Ukraine, a postSoviet nuclear power, for access to its nuclear technology.

The meeting with MI6 had been arranged by John Shaw, who was the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary for international technology security.

“There was no doubt that the Iranians were focused on developing a nuclear weapons capability,” Shaw recalled last week. “It wasn’t about keeping the lights burning in Tehran.”

American intelligence agencies startled the world last week by judging “with high confidence” that while Tehran continued to enrich uranium – which could be used for nuclear power or bombs – it had halted its nuclear “weaponisation” programme in 2003, before the MI6 meeting.