Because parts for the uranium-conversion plant are huge and expensive, one of the diplomats said March 12 that they would have been difficult to ship out of the country without the knowledge of the government.

He called the 1984 sale a flagrant example of how export controls are contravened to supply rogue governments with such technology.

Such plants are used to enrich uranium that at lower levels can generate electric power -- but at levels above 90 percent can become a component in nuclear warheads.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the government is looking into the International Atomic Energy Agency's findings.

Libya owned up in December to having programs for weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms, and pledged to scrap them.

The diplomats declined to identify the Japanese company involved but described the conversion plant sale as unusual in several respects.

Unlike most deals made by Libya, Iran and North Korea, the sale was apparently directly arranged with the Japanese instead of through middlemen linked to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist heading the loose international nuclear sales network, said one of the diplomats.

The Japan Times Weekly: March 20, 2004
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