Taiwan denies knowledge of firms aiding Iran's nuclear ambitions

Dec 12, 2009, 13:12 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan has denied any knowledge of claims that its firms may be selling specialist nuclear equipment to Iran, press reports said Saturday.

Britain's Daily Telegraph this week claimed that Taiwan firms were aiding Iran and that United Nations officials were investigating claims that Iran has established a new smuggling network using companies based in Taiwan.

'The Bureau of Foreign Trade screens export materials. One can check the bureau's export list to see if the equipments are really key equipments which can be used to maker nuclear arms,' the LIberty Times quoted the unnamed source as saying.

Huang Chih-peng, director of the Bureau of Foreign Trade, said that bureau keeps a list of sensitive products exported to foreign countries, and records if the goods were delivered to foreign companies.

'But if Taiwan firm sells certain goods to a foreign firm, and that foreign firm re-sells the goods to another buyer, we have not control over that,' he said.

Recent intelligence reports have claimed that officials from Iran's Ministry of Defence held a series of meeting with companies based in Taiwan to buy hundreds of pressure transducers, which can be used to produce weapons-grade uranium, the Daily Telegraph said.

The transducers were originally manufactured in Europe and then sold to a company in Taiwan, which then sold them on to Iran's defence ministry, it claimed.

UN officials are now investigating whether the European companies are undertaking proper checks of end-user certificates for their equipment, the Daily Telegraph said.