Morning:
13°c
N Korea: We have found a new way to make nuclear weapons
Alison Richards04.09.09
North Korea today said it was closer to a second way of making nuclear weapons - a move analysts saw as a new tactic to put pressure on the international community after a month of conciliatory gestures.
The chief US envoy for the North, Stephen Bosworth, said the enrichment claim was "of concern".
He was in Beijing on a trip to Asia to discuss ways to bring Pyongyang back to long-stalled negotiations on giving up its nuclear ambitions.
"Experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase," the North's KCNA news agency quoted its United Nations delegation as saying in a letter to the head of the UN Security Council.
America has long suspected the North of having a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons.
Experts have said it has not developed anything near a full-scale uranium programme, although it has enough plutonium for six to eight bombs.
"I think for all of us, it reconfirms the necessity to maintain a coordinated position on the need for complete, verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula," Mr Bosworth said, fter meetings with Chinese officials.
The North said its latest steps were in response to tighter sanctions, which followed a rocket launch in April.
At the UN, the mission of the United States, which holds the Security Council presidency, said it had received the North Korean letter and circulated it to the other 14 members of the council.
UN sanctions have hurt the impoverished North's arms trade, one of its few significant exports, and analysts said it may be angered that its latest attempts at conciliation with the outside world have been largely rebuffed.
In the past month, North Korea has released two US journalists, a South Korean worker and fishermen it had held in separate incidents.
The United States has refused to ease up on the sanctions.
Peter Beck, research fellow at Stanford University and a specialist on Korean affairs, said: "They are taking a mixed strategy, which I would call the sweet and sour approach.
"This keeps their adversaries guessing and it makes it more difficult to formulate policy."
Reader views (3)
It is ludicrous for a country with a vast store of nuclear weapons to dictate to the world on who should possess them and who should not. All the dictators about this have vast amounts of them and one in particular answers to no one because its protector the US, threatens whoever dares to question this free hand. And to think we fought a 5 year war against Hitler to prevent this .
- Thomas Hayes, Leeds UK
What planet is Thomas on? The one where North Korea doesn't brutally mistreat its own starving people, repress every activity by them, is ruled by a tyrannical dictator, threatens its neighbours, runs its economy by proliferating missile technology to other pariah states like Iran, which then passes it to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which then uses it to attack Israel.
Just another excuse for the Israel-haters to crawl out from under their stones.
- Ces, london
Great news from N.Korea and now perhaps the US dominated UN, will stop demonising that country and maybe take another look at Israel and ITS arsenal of nuclear weapons.
T H Leeds
- Thomas Hayes, Leeds UK
