Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher denied on Friday US accusations that Cairo was developing ballistic missiles in cooperation with North Korea, saying “some Americans are making problems between Egypt and the US.”
“Such allegations are baseless,” Maher was quoted by Al Jazeera satellite TV channel as saying in an interview with Egypt’s TV.
Meanwhile, a report by the Middle East Newsline (MENL) said Friday that the US administration had concluded that despite Egypt's cooperation with North Korea, the Arab country had remained within what officials described as "acceptable limits" on missile development.
Administration officials were quoted as saying their concerns had been assuaged by Egypt's replies on questions concerning missile cooperation with North Korea.
The officials said they had received assurances from Cairo that Egypt was not developing a variant of the No-Dong intermediate-range missile.
The news service cited State Department officials as telling reporters that Washington had determined that Egypt was continuing to cooperate with North Korea on missile development. But they added that the cooperation was largely connected to short- and medium-range Scud-class missiles.
They said this did not constitute a short-term threat to Israel or the Middle East.
An unnamed senior State Department official told Reuters of the new development in the dispute.
"We have had some discussions with the Egyptians about their missile program in order to satisfy ourselves that they were not going into areas that we felt were inappropriate," the official said on Tuesday.
"We're satisfied with what they told us, but this is a subject we'll continue to keep under close observation and discussion," he added.
It was reported early last week that the US administration was planning to establish a new mechanism to better coordinate US arms sales to Egypt and to more efficiently monitor the Arab state's acquisitions of advanced weapons technology.
But the US official declined to comment on the report, according to Reuters.
A senior administration official had told the Jerusalem Post that the move followed a dispute between the US and Egypt over the latter's efforts, according to the CIA and others, to develop and produce ballistic missiles with North Korea's help.
Egypt has denied that such a program exists, although the issue is repeatedly raised in meetings between senior US and Egyptian officials and has become a sore point in the allies' bilateral relationship, said the official – Albawaba.com
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