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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (62849)	12/22/2002 11:44:33 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The situation is North Korea has really gone over the top. It is difficult to see what they are playing at. Here is the lead from the NYT and the URL December 23, 2002 North Korea Says It Regains Access to Its Plutonium By DAVID E. SANGER and JAMES DAO [W] ASHINGTON, Dec. 22 ? North Korea said today that it had removed the equipment that international inspectors installed more than eight years ago to make sure that it would not make use of its large stockpile of plutonium to produce nuclear weapons. Bush administration officials said they feared that North Korea could use that plutonium to manufacture five or six nuclear weapons within months. The action, coming one day after North Korea took similar monitoring equipment off a nuclear reactor, intensifies the crisis over North Korea's nuclear capability, at a moment when President Bush has tried to focus the world's attention on the threat posed by Iraq. It also poses a challenge to the newly elected government in South Korea. [Page A12.] Several outside experts ? and a few Bush administration officials speaking on background this evening ? said North Korea might now be able to create a small nuclear arsenal in the coming year, assuming it has the technical ability to engineer a working nuclear weapon. The removal of surveillance cameras and seals from a pond where spent nuclear fuel rods are stored essentially puts Mr. Bush in the same position where President Bill Clinton was in 1994, when North Korea threatened to turn its plutonium into additional weaponry. By that time, the Central Intelligence Agency already believed that North Korea had separated enough plutonium to produce two nuclear weapons. nytimes.com