The Moscow Times

The Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, denied Tuesday that it had cooperated with the CIA on monitoring North Korea’s nuclear program.

The SVR’s press service said that a report in The New York Times about a deal between the two intelligence agencies “does not correspond to reality.”

The New York Times reported Monday that sometime in the early 1990s, SVR agents installed secret nuclear detection equipment inside the Russian Embassy in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. The equipment was designed to pick up emissions of the isotope krypton, which would signal that North Korea had resumed plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the newspaper said.

“We proceed from the fact that some forces in the United States have deliberately fabricated this publication at a time when Russia is making intense efforts to help defuse the tension around North Korea’s nuclear program,” the SVR said in a statement.

Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov spent three days discussing ways out of the crisis with officials in Pyongyang. He traveled to Beijing on Tuesday and was expected to return to Moscow later this week.