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Topic: N. Korea Secretly Builds Nukes (Read 371 times)

Rhune
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N. Korea Secretly Builds Nukes
« on: Oct 17^th, 2002, 10:53am »

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U.S.: N. Korea admits nuclear weapons program
From Andrea Koppel and John King
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, October 17, 2002 Posted: 11:23 AM EDT (1523 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials are holding urgent consultations with Japan and South Korea in light of an admission by North Korea that it has an active nuclear weapons program.

A senior Bush administration official said the revelation about the nuclear weapons program came in a meeting in Pyongyang between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs James Kelly and a top North Korean official, Kang Suk-ju, described as the equivalent of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's right-hand man.

North Korea said the program began in the 1990s, several years after it signed the so-called Agreed Framework in 1994, promising the United States, Japan, and South Korea that it would freeze its nuclear program.

The administration official said Kelly told Kang that the United States knows the North has a secret nuclear weapons program using "different technology" from that used before 1994, and that the North had saved enough plutonium for at least two nuclear weapons.

The North Korean official then shocked Kelly when he looked at him and said "something to the effect of, '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 the senior source who has been briefed on the meeting.

Kelly and Chinese foreign ministry officials are expected to discuss the issue among other topics in Beijing ahead of next week's U.S. summit between U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

The delegation, which also includes U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, is also scheduled to visit Japan and South Korea.

Following the North's admission, McCormack administration meetings were held about how to respond, culminating in a National Security Council meeting on the issue Tuesday. Bush also is scheduled to meet jointly with the prime ministers of Japan and South Korea this month at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

Despite this, the Bush administration intends to keep talking with North Korea and does not intend to put discussions about disarming the North on hold, the administration source said.

"It's not a show-stopper," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung held a national security council meeting Thursday morning to discuss the revelation, according to South Korea's National Security Adviser Im Fung-joon.

Seoul believes the issue must be resolved peacefully through dialogue, according to Im. Kim considers this a serious problem and said North Korea's nuclear development cannot be condoned under any circumstances, according to the Korean official.

He also said North Korea's admission might be considered a sign that North Korea is ready to resolve this problem through dialogue.

The development means the United States must stop its current policies regarding improving relations with North Korea, Boucher said.

"The United States was prepared to offer economic and political steps to improve the lives of the North Korean people," Boucher said in a statement, "provided the North were dramatically to alter its behavior across a range of issues, including its weapons of mass destruction programs, development and export of ballistic missiles, threats to its neighbors, support for terrorism, and the deplorable treatment of the North Korean people.

"In light of our concerns about the North's nuclear weapons program, however, we are unable to pursue this approach."

The senior administration official said the United States has told North Korea it has violated, in addition to the Agreed Framework, the Nonproliferation Treaty, its International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement, and the Joint North-South Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

In 1994, North Korea said it would no longer seek to develop nuclear weapons. In exchange, the United States and others agreed to provide light-water nuclear technology for power generation.

"The North Koreans attempted to blame the United States and said that they considered the Agreed Framework nullified," Boucher said. "Assistant Secretary Kelly pointed out that North Korea had been embarked on this program for several years."

Another senior U.S. official told CNN that Washington received intelligence "back over the summer months" indicating that North Korea had a nuclear weapons program involving the use of highly enriched uranium.

This intelligence, the official said, indicates the program was launched in the late 1990s -- several years after North Korea signed the agreement with the United States, Japan, and South Korea to end its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Bush referred to North Korea as a member of the "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran -- a statement rejected by Pyongyang.

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