By KUNA,
Tokyo : Japanese police have raided two companies on suspicion they helped supply Japan-made vacuum pumps to North Korea being used in uranium enrichment.
Last week, the authorities searched Tokyo Vacuum, a machinery maker in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, and the Tokyo-based trading firm Nakano Corp., police and Nakano Corporation said Thursday.
The investigation is based on information provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which discovered the pumps at a North Korean nuclear facility during an investigation last year, a spokesman for the Kanagawa police said.
Police believe the 10 vacuum pumps were exported to North Korea via Taiwan in 2003, and have sent investigators to Taiwan.
Nakano Corp. said it had no knowledge that the pumps would be transported to North Korea.
In Japan, exports of vacuum pumps are subject to government approval under the foreign trade law controlling exports of devices convertible for weapons of mass destruction because they can be used to enrich uranium.
Under a deal agreed last year with South Korea, the US, China, Japan, and Russia, North Korea is disabling its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, north of the capital, in exchange for political and economic rewards. But the process has stalled because of a dispute over whether Pyongyang has produced a full declaration of all its nuclear programs.