North Korean plutonium boast shakes US
Saturday, April 19, 2003
scmp.com
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE and REUTERS in Seoul and Washington
Days before scheduled talks with China and the US, North Korea last night said it had drawn a lesson from the Iraq war - and begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods.
The US was giving "active consideration" to pulling out of the landmark talks, a Bush administration official said. But a senior State Department official said he believed the three-day talks in Beijing were still on.
The administration official said the United States had no evidence reprocessing had in fact begun, but did not rule it out. The US believes the reprocessing would furnish the communist regime enough plutonium to make several bombs. South Korea and Japan also said they had no evidence of the reprocessing.
Earlier, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying: "The Iraqi war teaches a lesson that in order to prevent a war and defend the security of a country and the sovereignty of a nation it is necessary to have a powerful physical deterrent force.
"As we have already declared, we are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase, as we sent interim information to the US and other countries concerned early in March after resuming our nuclear activities [in December].''
North Korea has been preparing to reactivate a mothballed nuclear power plant capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.
The crisis triggered by North Korea's six months of nuclear brinkmanship is to be the subject of next week's talks between the US, China and the government in Pyongyang.
The North's statement also acknowledged for the first time the expected three-way talks next week to discuss the six-month-old nuclear impasse.
"At the talks the Chinese side will play a relevant role as the host state and the essential issues related to the settlement of the nuclear issue will be discussed between [North Korea] and the US," the foreign ministry spokesman in Pyongyang told the North's KCNA news agency.
A presidential spokeswoman said South Korea had seen no sign that the North was reprocessing nuclear fuel rods and received no official information to that effect from the North last month.
Han Sung-joo, the South's ambassador to the US, said North Korea was closer to having nuclear weapons than in 1993, if it did not already have them, while the Bush administration was more determined than its predecessors to crack down on North Korea.
Since the eruption of the nuclear crisis, the North has demanded a non-aggression pact and bilateral talks from the US. The US has always rejected the demands. |
