North Korea Prepares More Weapons Fuel

[BanglaBhoot]

By EVAN RAMSTAD and JAY SOLOMON
North Korea late Thursday notified the United Nations Security Council that it was building more atomic bombs, specifying that it was again using spent plutonium from its sole nuclear plant and was close to using highly enriched uranium as a second source of weapons fuel.

In a letter to the council, North Korea said it was ready for both "dialogue and sanctions" as a result of its activity.

The letter, issued publicly early Friday in Asia by North Korea's state-run news agency, was written in response to the council's inquiry about a statement North Korea made in June, after it was sanctioned for testing an atomic weapon on May 25.

North Korea said in the new letter that it would never be bound by the sanctions passed June 12, known as Resolution 1874. And, it said, if U.N. member countries place sanctions ahead of dialogue, it would be forced to take "stronger self-defensive countermeasures." In the past, Pyongyang has used such a term to describe weapons tests.

In its first statement after the sanctions passed, North Korea said it would start a program to use highly enriched uranium as fuel source for nuclear weapons.

U.S. intelligence officials have long believed that North Korea was developing a uranium-enrichment capability. But Washington has been uncertain how far along it was. In 2002, North Korea acknowledged its uranium-development effort, but then denied it for years. The June statement marked a turn in its external position on the matter.

Last month, North Korea appeared to be taking steps to end a year-long series of actions that have stirred tension with the U.S. and other countries. It released two U.S. journalists it had detained earlier this year, and met with senior South Korean officials.

The Obama administration has been hoping those actions might indicate a willingness in Pyongyang to return to the six-party aid-for-disarmament talks the U.S. has used since 2003 to try to persuade North Korea to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declined to comment on Pyongyang's claims. He said: "The United States and the international community have offered North Korea a path to a very different future if it recommits to complete and verifiable denuclearization. It should choose wisely."

North Korea Prepares More Weapons Fuel - WSJ.com

 

[BanglaBhoot]

North Korea Reveals Second Path to Nuclear Bomb

SEOUL — North Korea’s announcement on Friday that its experiment in enriching uranium is at “completion stage” marks the strongest signal yet from Pyongyang that it is racing to develop a second method of making nuclear bombs.

North Korea also said it was building additional nuclear bombs with plutonium it had recently gleaned from its reactor in Yongbyon. It said it had completed reprocessing the latest batch of spent fuel unloaded from the reactor, repeating the procedure believed to have given the North enough plutonium for six to eight bombs.

For years, officials in Washington and elsewhere have debated whether North Korea was pursuing a clandestine uranium-enrichment program. After years of denial, North Korea announced in April that it intended to enrich uranium.

In June, it said its enrichment program was in an “experimental stage.”

On Friday, it provided an update on its progress, highlighting its nuclear card at a time when Washington’s special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is on a high-profile trip to Northeast Asia to consult with its allies on how to force North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs.

“Experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency, or K.C.N.A., reported, quoting what it said was a letter the North Korean government had sent to the United Nations Security Council in response to a request for information. “Reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized.”

The letter, whose full text was carried on K.C.N.A., gave no details. But the use of the word “experimental” suggested the country was still short of running a full-scale enrichment program. South Korean officials have said they believe North Korea first acquired uranium-enrichment technology from Pakistan.

A facility that produces highly enriched uranium for weapons requires the costly installation of thousands of centrifuges. But unlike plutonium, uranium can be enriched in relatively small and inconspicuous facilities, such as an underground factory, experts said.

“Our intelligence authorities will try to verify the North Korean claim, but it won’t be easy,” said Won Tae-je, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Seoul. He said the North’s claim could also be “just rhetoric for negotiations.”

The existence of a second program to make bomb fuel would give North Korea something else to negotiate with the West. More difficult to detect or monitor than its plutonium counterpart, a uranium program poses a bigger challenge to Western officials who fear North Korea could sell such technology abroad, as it has sold some of its reactor technology to Syria.

In its letter to the Security Council, North Korea also said, “We are prepared for both dialogue and sanctions.”

After months of raising tensions with a long-range rocket launching in April and a nuclear test in May, North Korea has made a series of conciliatory gestures toward the United States and South Korea in recent weeks. It released two American journalists in August and agreed to hold reunions later this month of Korean families separated by the Korean War.

But these gestures have not been answered with an invitation to direct talks with the United States, as North Korea has requested, nor a easing of international sanctions, which appears to have frustrated the North’s leaders, said Ryoo Kihl-jae, a North Korea expert at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. Washington and its allies insist that Pyongyang return to six-nation talks, which also include China, South Korea, Russia and Japan, in discussions on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs.

“Impatience is the word that first came to my mind when I read the statement and the North’s recent moves,” he said. “They are almost begging for dialogue.”

Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University, said he felt the North was trying to assert itself in an effort to raise the stakes in the region as Mr. Bosworth talks with allies.

In Beijing on Friday, Mr. Bosworth said the North Korean action “reconfirms the necessity to maintain a coordinated position on the need for complete, verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Reuters reported.

In Tokyo, the Japanese foreign minister, Hirofumi Nakasone, said his government “will definitely not tolerate North Korea possessing nuclear weapons.” And Moon Tae-young, a spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry, said: “We will deal with North Korea’s threats and provocative acts in a stern and consistent manner.”

North Korea on Friday reiterated that it quit six-nation talks because they were used for “wanton violation” of its “sovereignty and right for peaceful development,” and called again for direct talks with Washington.

“We have never objected the denuclearizing of the Korean Peninsula,” K.C.N.A. quoted the letter as saying. “It depends strictly on the United States’ nuclear policy on Korea.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/world/asia/05korea.html?_r=1&ref=global-home