Confronted with new American intelligence evidence, North Korean official Kang Suk Ju, after an initial angry denial, is reported to have said, "Your president called us a member of the axis of evil. ... Your troops are deployed on the Korean peninsula. ... Of course, we have a nuclear program."
Are the North Koreans bluffing? Just to scare us. Is Iraq bluffing when they say they don't have nuclear weapons. What's Iran's role in this axis.
christiansciencemonitor.com
posted 10:35 a.m. ET/7:35 a.m. PT, October 17
By Tom Regan |csmonitor.com
Axis A-bomb? North Korea's shocking revelation
With shocking candor, North Korea has admitted to the United States it has been developing a nuclear weapons program for the past several years. The revelation effectively nullifies the 1994 agreement barring North Korea from such activity, and establishes a dramatic new front in the Bush administration's confrontation with the "axis of evil" (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea). The admission, CNN reports, came during a high-level US visit to Pyongyang earlier this month. Confronted with new American intelligence evidence, North Korean official Kang Suk Ju, after an initial angry denial, is reported to have said, "Your president called us a member of the axis of evil. ... Your troops are deployed on the Korean peninsula. ... Of course, we have a nuclear program." According to a New York Times report, the North Koreans acknowledged having "more powerful things as well," an apparent reference to other weapons of mass destruction.
Stunned US officials say they seek "a peaceful resolution of this situation," and the Bush administration dispatched envoys to the region to consult with allies and call on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to halt nuclear development. US officials remain uncertain whether North Korea's program has been "weaponized," but one intelligence report estimates the country has already produced one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons. |
