29 January 2004
NORTH Korea has offered Nigeria missile technology but Abuja has not taken up the offer, a spokesman said yesterday, clarifying an earlier statement that Nigeria was seeking such weapons.
A spokesman for Vice-President Atiku Abubakar said the subject of arms sales had come up at a meeting in Abuja, Tuesday, between Atiku and his North Korean counterpart, Yang Hyong-Sop. Spokesman Onukaba Ojo ,who had earlier said Atiku had met the North Korean delegation to discuss buying missiles , said he had since discussed the matter with Nigerian defence officials and found that the suggestion had come from North Korea.
"They came to us wanting a memorandum of understanding signed with us towards developing missile technology and training and manufacture of ammunition. They were just trying to get us interested," Ojo said.
"There hasn't been any interest shown on our side. We're not interested, but we didn't tell them that that way," he said.
FG's move may annoys Washington
Any move by Nigeria to acquire North Korean ballistic missiles is sure to annoy Washington, which is locked in a bitter stand-off with Pyongyang over its nuclear ambitions and international arms sales.
Kim Jong-Il's regime , which US President George W. Bush regards as a member of a so-called "axis of evil" , earns much of its hard currency by selling and swapping missile and weapons secrets.
North Korea has developed missiles capable of carrying warheads as far as Japan, and is reported to have shared its technology with Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan and Saddam Hussein's former Iraqi regime.
Profits from the proliferation are said by US intelligence to feed back into North Korea's search for a nuclear weapon. Nigeria, by contrast, is seen as a friend of the United States.
Bush visited Abuja last year and praised President Olusegun Obasanjo for his leadership within Africa. Some 15 per cent of the United States' crude oil needs are supplied by Nigeria's burgeoning oil industry.
Ojo insisted that Abuja's talks with Pyongyang should not give Washington cause to worry, and promised that Nigeria was not at all interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
"I'm sure that Nigeria is not dreaming of nuclear weapons at all, just missile technology," he said, adding that the foundry discussed at Tuesday's meeting would be for civilian use. If you're acquiring technology for peaceful purpose I don't think that should make our allies uneasy," he added.
Earlier, Atiku's office had released a statement implying that military links with North Korea were nothing new.
"He assured that government would continue to co-operate with the Korean government in the defence sector, an area in which both Nigeria and North Korea have co-operated over the years," the statement said.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country, and its military is by far the most powerful in West Africa, where it has contributed successfully to a number of widely-praised peacekeeping missions.
It has never made war on its weaker neighbours, although it does have an unresolved boundary dispute with Cameroon over ownership of the potentially oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula. The disagreement is under UN mediation.
Ojo said missiles would add to Nigeria's defensive capabilities.
"Nigeria has a very formidable military ... I'm sure it's not out of place to want to fortify ourselves. Nigeria is not a belligerent nation, we don't make wars," he said.
"Anything we do is for the defence of our country and peacekeeping in West Africa," he said.
Yang Hyong-Sop is vice president of North Korea's ruling Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, and is regarded by observers as a powerful figure in Pyongyang's secretive regime. According to Atiku's office, Hyong-Sop made an apparent dig at US pressure on Pyongyang's over its weapons programmes during his visit, saying: "World peace is threatened unilaterally by international forces."
The United States is seeking to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programmes.
A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Nigeria had no immediate comment on Nigeria's talks with North Korea.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2004 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
