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Talks Set On Nuclear Smuggling

BONN -- Russian officials will visit Bonn to review progress on their agreement with Germany to combat nuclear smuggling, the Chancellery said Thursday.


Top intelligence aide Bernd Schmidbauer, who signed the agreement in Moscow on Monday, told German television that the accord aimed at boosting information swaps between Russian and German intelligence was just a beginning.


A Chancellery spokeswoman said Schmidbauer had invited Russian intelligence chief Sergei Stepashin to Bonn to continue talks on the illegal trade which has raised fears that rogue states or militants could build a nuclear bomb.


Four radioactive shipments, three of deadly plutonium-239 and one of highly enriched uranium have been seized in Germany since May and Bonn believes they may have come from Russia. Moscow denies its nuclear stocks are being pilfered.


In Moscow on Wednesday, Itar-Tass reported that Russian authorities had caught two men trying to steal nearly 10 kilograms of low-grade uranium from a nuclear complex in central Russia.

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