"Russia and China said to aid North Korea nuclear programme"
asia.reuters.com
18 October, 2002 08:37 GMT+08:00 Print This Article
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration believes Russia and China assisted North Korea in developing an enriched uranium programme and will urge both governments to stop the cooperation and condemn Pyongyang's activities as violating international accords, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
"The most important thing now is to stop the uranium enrichment programme," one senior official told Reuters.
Asked if Russia and China, whom the CIA has long considered the world's top two nuclear proliferators, were the suspected suppliers, the official said: "I wouldn't steer you off that."
Providing more detail about Pyongyang's programme, first disclosed on Wednesday, he said the U.S. has "evidence of North Korean efforts to procure materials, including specialty metals, that they would need for a massive production-level (uranium enrichment) programme."
"There is no disagreement within the administration that North Korea was trying to procure tubes for a centrifuge cascade," a key component for enriching uranium for nuclear weapons, he said.
While North Korea acknowledged the uranium enrichment programme in talks with U.S. officials this month, there is much Washington does not know about the programme, he said.
But there has been no change in the U.S. long-standing assessment that Pyongyang already has enough nuclear fuel for one or two bombs, he said.
Another senior official, who asked not to be named, suggested earlier that North Korea probably had foreign assistance in developing its uranium enrichment programme but declined to discuss the possible source.
"It's fair to say that the questions and concerns that we've had about enrichment capabilities in other states support a conclusion that this has never been done indigenously -- that these programmes are dependent on support from the outside," the senior U.S. official told reporters at a briefing.
Asked if the United States had any evidence that Russia or China had supplied North Korea with material for its uranium enrichment programme, the U.S. official replied: "as a matter of government policy, no."
Asked if Russian or Chinese entities might have aided North Korea without the knowledge of their respective governments, he replied "I can't get into that."
Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly are now in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials on North Korea and other topics.
Bolton later visits Moscow, Paris and London -- three other prime nuclear weapons states -- while Kelly goes on to Tokyo and Seoul.
The U.S. envoys are trying to forge a united position on North Korea which admitted it had a secret nuclear weapons programme -- in violation of the 1994 Agreed Framework under which it agreed to halt its nuclear efforts -- at a session with U.S. officials in Pyongyang two weeks ago.
U.S. President George W. Bush earlier this year branded North Korea, Iran and Iraq as members of an "axis of evil" seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. officials stressed that they viewed the case of North Korea differently from Iraq, which Bush has threatened with military action if it fails to give up its weapons programmes. |
