GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN (Germany), June 11: US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday Iran was fast approaching a point where it might have nuclear weapons, although it did not appear to have any at present.
Mr Rumsfeld also urged more international cooperation to counter international terrorism and “rogue states” that allegedly have weapons of mass destruction, singling out North Korea.
“The intelligence community in the United States and around the world currently assesses that Iran does not have nuclear weapons,” he told a group of military students at the Marshall Centre in the southern German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
“The assessment is that they do have a very active programme and are likely to have nuclear weapons in a relatively short period of time.”
Iran has denied developing nuclear weapons, but it has been accused by Washington of violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by using undeclared nuclear material to test a uranium enrichment system.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has also accused Tehran of failing to declare it had imported uranium in 1991 or to show where and how it was processed.
Mr Rumsfeld, on a brief visit to Germany to attend an anniversary ceremony at a US-German security policy centre, also said the United States would not tolerate attempts by Iran to promote a religious government in neighbouring Iraq.
“We’re going to actively oppose any Iranian influence in that country that attempts to make Iraq an Iran-type model and we’ll do it with words to start with, and we’ll do it energetically,” he said.
VERBAL ATTACK ON N. KOREA: “We know that North Korea is the world’s foremost proliferator of ballistic missile technology. Now they have stated that they may not only build but also sell nuclear weapons and materials,” he said in a speech at the centre.
The remarks were the latest in a long series of US verbal attacks on North Korea, which said earlier this week it wanted to build up its nuclear weapons capability to cut its conventional forces and divert funds to prop up its economy.
The United States invaded Iraq because it said Baghdad posed a threat with weapons of mass destruction. None have so far been found.
German Defense Minister Peter Struck, who also spoke at the centre, said it was time to move forward from the disagreements over the war against Iraq which Germany opposed.
“We had different points of view as far as Iraq was concerned, but a friendship like ours can weather such a storm. We are now looking for the future,” Struck said.
In addition to threats from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, there could be threats in forms that are currently unknown, Rumsfeld said.
“There will be surprises,” he said. “We may face a world of novel and still unimagined information age challenges, cyber attacks, biological threats which are something that I think need to be elevated as a concern,” he said.
The United States was working to transform its armed services to deal with new types of threats, he said. It was also working with NATO to try and transform the alliance’s capabilities to meet those goals, he said.
Mr Rumsfeld arrived in Brussels on Wednesday afternoon and will attend NATO meetings on Thursday.—Reuters