A leading Iranian opposition group said Tuesday that the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan has agreed to sell four nuclear weapons to Iran.
According to Mohammed Mohaddesin, director of international relations for the People's Mujahedin, the group's agents inside Iran discovered that the warheads have been paid for but not delivered.Kazakhstan's prime minister, Sergei Tereschenko, pledged on a visit to Israel Sept. 7 that his country would sell none of the nuclear weapons it inherited upon the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Kazakhstan, the largest of the newly independent Muslim republics of Central Asia, is one of four former Soviet states with nuclear weapons of the Soviet Union left on its soil.
Mohaddesin said in a statement, "In attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, the mullahs pursue no objective but to export their religious fundamentalism."
He said the Islamic Republic of Iran's defense minister, Akbar Torkan visited Kazakhstan in July to finalize the warhead deal.
In a column published Monday in The Washington Post, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak said the Mujahedin report "matches U.S. intelligence reports received several weeks ago."
The columnists quoted Bush administration officials as saying that the deal might have been concluded by out-of-control Russian military elements.
A State Department official, who requested anonymity, said that a claim similar to the Mujahedin's had been made earlier this year and U.S. officials had not been able to confirm it. The official would not comment on the current report.
Another official cautioned that the Mujahedin has a stake in any report that makes the fundamentalist Muslim leaders of Iran look bad.