Japan investigates N.Korea n-plant find

Two Japanese companies are being investigated by police on suspicion of illegally exporting vacuum pumps to North Korea, where they were used in nuclear facilities, police and domestic media said.

The police raided unlisted Tokyo Vacuum, a vacuum device maker, and Nakano Corporation, an unlisted trading firm, last week after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported it had found Japanese vacuum pumps in North Korea, said Shinya Yamada, a police official from Kanagawa, near Tokyo.

The vacuum pumps were found last year by officials from the IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear regulator, in nuclear enrichment equipment in North Korea, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

Japan requires trade ministry permission for the export of certain vacuum pumps, out of fear they may be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The police had found that the pumps were first exported to Taiwan and from there reached North Korea, but they are still investigating how they got there, Yamada said.

A spokesman for Nakano Corporation told Reuters the trading firm did export vacuum pumps to Taiwan in 2003, but it was not aware that they were going to North Korea.

"If we'd known that, we wouldn't have done such a thing," Hiroshi Nakano, president of Nakano Corporation, was quoted by Japanese public broadcaster NHK as saying.

The firm had received a certificate from Tokyo Vacuum saying those pumps did not require trade ministry export permission, the Nakano Corporation spokesman said.

Tokyo Vacuum could not be reached for comment.

North Korea was due to declare details of its nuclear programmes at the end of last year, under a deal under which the reclusive communist state has agreed to abandon all its nuclear programmes in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives.

But the declaration has been held up, partly because of Pyongyang's reluctance to discuss any transfer of nuclear technology to other countries, notably Syria, as well as to account for its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.