Japan firm in nuclear link raided

Mitutoyo, based outside Tokyo, has about 4,000 employees

Japanese police have raided a company suspected of illegally exporting precision measuring equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Mitutoyo Corp is alleged to have sold the equipment to China and Thailand in 2001 and 2002 without asking government permission as required.

Similar equipment produced by Mitutoyo was found in Libya, Kyodo news said.

Libya admitted in 2003 that it had a secret nuclear weapons programme but had since renounced it.

Japanese police want to find out how the equipment found its way to Libya. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found a precision instrument made by Mitutoyo at a nuclear facility in Libya between December 2003 and March 2004, reports quoted the police as saying.

According to Japanese media reports, Mitutoyo's instruments were shipped to Libya by a Malaysian company called Scomi, which has been linked to the international nuclear trafficking network.

A senior Mitutoyo official told The Asahi Shimbun: "We did not know the company [Scope] was problematic, and we never would have imagined that [the instruments] could have been transferred to Libya."

Three-dimensional measuring machines, such as those made by Mitutoyo, can be used to measure centrifuges used in uranium enrichment, Mikio Aoki, an official at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry told the Associated Press.