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North Korea invites nuclear inspection
PYONGYANG, North Korea, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- In a rare set of remarks, North
Korea's top nuclear envoy said the country would be "fully prepared" to
prove it has no uranium-based weapons program.
Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Kwan made the statements in the weeks
leading up to the resumption of six-nation talks.
In an interview, Kim told CNN North Korea had no nuclear weapons ambitions
or plans in place.
"We don't have any uranium-based weapons program, but in the future if
there is any kind of evidence that needs to be clarified we will be fully
prepared to do so," he said.
Kim also said Pyongyang wanted to return to the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty it walked away from in 2002, and was willing to abide by IAEA
rules, inviting any suspect reactors to have "strict supervision."
"The U.S. itself can have direct participation or the U.S. can pick a
nation that they trust," he added.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20050814-16384600-bc-norkor-nuketalks.xml
BUT, then a few months ago...
North Korea admits having nuclear weapons
Thursday, February 10, 2005 Updated at 5:33 AM EDT
Associated Press
Seoul - North Korea on Thursday announced publicly for the first time that
it has nuclear weapons and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks any
time soon, saying it needs the weapons as protection against an
increasingly hostile United States.
The communist state's pronouncement dramatically raised the stakes in the
two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to U.S.
President George W. Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end
North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation talks.
"We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush
administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the
[North]," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by
the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The claim could not be independently verified. North Korea expelled the
last UN nuclear monitors in late 2002 and has never tested a nuclear bomb,
although international officials have long suspected it has one or two
nuclear bombs and enough fuel for several more.
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U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington would consult
allies before responding.
"I think we just have to first look at the statement and then we need to
talk with our allies," she told Dutch RTL television while on a trip
through Europe.
"The North Koreans have no reason to believe that anyone wants to attack
them," she added. "They have been told they can have multilateral security
assurances if they will make the important decision to give up their
nuclear weapons program. So there is really no reason for this, but we
will examine where we go next."
Previously, North Korea had reportedly told U.S. negotiators in private
talks that it had nuclear weapons and might test one of them. The North's
UN envoy said last year that the country had "weaponized" plutonium from
its pool of 8,000 nuclear spent fuel rods. Those rods contained enough
plutonium for several bombs.
But Thursday's statement was North Korea's first public acknowledgment
that it has nuclear weapons.
North Korea's "nuclear weapons will remain [a] nuclear deterrent for
self-defence under any circumstances," the ministry said. It said that
what it considers Washington's attempts to topple the North's regime
"compels us to take a measure to bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal in
order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by its
people."
Since 2003, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia
have held three rounds of talks in Beijing aimed at persuading the North
to abandon nuclear weapons development in return for economic and
diplomatic rewards. No significant progress has been made.
A fourth round scheduled for last September was cancelled when North Korea
refused to attend, citing what it called a "hostile" U.S. policy.
In recent weeks, hopes had risen that North Korea might return to the
six-nation talks, especially after Mr. Bush refrained from any direct
criticism of North Korea when he started his second term last month.
On Thursday, North Korea said it decided not to rejoin such talks any time
soon after studying Mr. Bush's inaugural and State of the Union speeches
and after Ms. Rice labelled North Korea one of the "outposts of tyranny."
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused
North Korea of running a secret uranium-enrichment program in violation of
international treaties. Washington and its allies cut off free fuel oil
shipments for the impoverished country under a 1994 deal with the United
States.
North Korea retaliated by quitting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in
early 2003 and restarting its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program,
which had been frozen under the 1994 agreement.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050210.wnkor0210/BNStory/International/
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