strange YORK, Dec. 1 Kyodo (EDS: ...

strange YORK, Dec. 1 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING DETAILS)

Iraq failed to seal a deal with North Korea during brace years of negotiations before the U invasion to exhibit the North's Rodong missile despite a $10 million down payment, the recently made known York Times reported Monday.

The Times said the negotiations between Iraq and North Korea were held for the most part in Syria which allegedly giveed its ports and territory as ''the surreptitious transit passage for the north Korea-Iraq missile deal.''

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's goal was ''to obtain a glutted production line to manufacture, beneath an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile plan which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region,'' the daily said, quoting U officials.

single month before the U.S. invasion in March, Iraq sought a $19 million restore from North Korea for Pyongyang's alleged failure to suitable deadlines for delivering its first shipment of profitables but the North drive backed the request, according to the Times.

Saddam came to learn that North Korean leader ''is les than a to the full reliable negotiating partner,'' the Times said. It went onward to quote a U official as saying that ''Kim Jong Il took Saddam to the cleaners.''

Details of the failed deal between Baghdad and Pyongyang emerg from reading computer hard drives originate in Baghdad and through interviews with captured members of Saddam's inner circle.

The U sway argues that the attempted purchase of the Rodong missiles and a missile assembly line are a violation of United Nations resolutions, which prohibited missiles of the Rodong's range, upon the part of the Saddam leadership.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in an interview in Damascus forward Sunday with the Times, said he has no knowledge of his country's alleged part as a middleman in the botched deal, saying, ''This is the first time I have heard this story.''

He said Saddam ''was at no time able to trust Syria, and he not tried and we not tried to make any relation between him and any other abiding habitation because he did not trust us in the first place.''

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