Ian Cobain has a pair of stories in The Guardian summarizing a “report from a leading EU intelligence service” used “to warn off EU companies from doing business” with front companies for foreign WMD programs:
The 55-page intelligence assessment, dated July 1 2005, draws upon material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies, and has been used to brief European government ministers and to warn leading industrialists of the need for vigilance when exporting equipment or expertise to so-called rogue states.
It concludes that Syria and Pakistan have also been buying technology and chemicals needed to develop rocket programmes and to enrich uranium. It outlines the role played by Russia in the escalating Middle East arms build-up, and examines the part that dozens of Chinese front companies have played in North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
[snip]
The assessment declares that Iran has developed an extensive web of front companies, official bodies, academic institutes and middlemen dedicated to obtaining – in western Europe and in the former Soviet Union – the expertise, training, and equipment for nuclear programmes, missile development, and biological and chemical weapons arsenals.
Ian Cobain and Ian Traynor, Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile: Document seen by Guardian details web of front companies and middlemen, January 4, 2006, 1.
Ian Traynor and Ian Cobain, Intelligence report claims nuclear market thriving: European firms warned they are main target of illicit trade in weapons parts, January 4, 2006, 6.
These stories are similar to an October 2005 story by Cobain that revealed the existence of a 17 page British document, entitled Companies and Organisations of Proliferation Concern, that MI5 compiled to prevent British firms from “inadvertently exporting sensitive goods or expertise to organisations covertly involved in WMD programmes.”
Also similar: A September 2005 DDP News Agency report by Udo Ulfkotte (yes, that Udo Ulfkotte) revealing that the German Federal Economics Ministry wrote to German firms during the first week of August and warned them “not to make deliveries to undercover military procurement agencies of the Iranians.” (“Germany Warns Companies Not to Deliver to Iranian Procurement Agencies,” DDP News Agency, September 2, 2005.)
Presumably—although Cobain doesn’t say so—the MI5 document and German letter were part of the same effort that led to the compilation of the document described by Cobain.
I’d like to know how this effort is related to the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) efforts to “develop and share national analyses of key proliferation actors and networks, their financing sources, and other support structures …” (more)