BIS officials stress that the shipment itself was legal and that the company — which is not named — did not know its products could be used for such purposes.

"We are talking about a legal export, a regular business operation," BIS spokesman Jan Šubrt told The Prague Post Nov. 13. "However, the BIS has, as all secret services do, a list of dual-use merchandise that is not to be exported to certain countries."

Šubrt said the BIS tracked several North Korean "negotiators" the moment they began shopping around the Czech Republic for the equipment in 2005. "We were monitoring the deal the whole time and stopped it once the North Koreans were ready for the final step," he said.

Šubrt said North Korea often looks to developed countries for equipment it cannot produce on its own. He declined to detail what the machine tools could be used for.

This is the latest revelation to come out of the BIS's 2005 annual report, which is being declassified gradually as Parliament's defense and security commission continues to review it in closed session. Recently released details of other incidents in 2005 include:

Three Egyptians who were arrested after attempting to enter the cockpit of a Czech Airlines plane en route from Oslo to Prague.

The expulsion of an Algerian national who the BIS said was planning terrorist attacks on Czech targets.

The monitoring of several men thought to be members of the Irish Republican Army who were meeting in Prague.

The BIS is still tightly controlling just how much information to release.

Šubrt suggested that North Korea is now shopping around for the tools elsewhere in Europe, but would not be specific.

During the Soviet era, the Czech Republic was known as a weapons supplier to countries that were either part of or allied with the communist bloc. Since then, the country has worked to shake that reputation.