US scientist ‘saw NK centrifuges’

Dr Hecker said he was shown hundreds of centrifuges in a modern control room

An American nuclear scientist says he was shown a vast new nuclear facility when he visited North Korea last week.

Dr Siegfried Hecker said he had been shown hundreds of centrifuges for enriching uranium, which can be used for making nuclear weapons.

The Stanford University scientist was stunned at how sophisticated the new plant was, he told The New York Times.

When international weapons inspectors were expelled from North Korea in 2009, the plant did not exist, officials say.

Dr Hecker said he saw “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges set up in an “ultra-modern control room”, the newspaper reported.

But he did not have time to ascertain whether the site was meant to produce the low-grade uranium required for a power plant, or the highly enriched uranium used in bomb-making, the paper quoted him as saying.

The report came as Stephen Bosworth, a senior US state department official responsible for North Korea, was expected to arrive in Asia for six-party talks on Pyongyang’s suspect nuclear program.

North Korea has nuclear and missile programmes and conducted underground atomic tests in 2006 and 2009.

The speed with which the country is pressing ahead with its nuclear programme will fuel suspicions that it is receiving help from abroad in circumventing United Nations sanctions, correspondents say.

Multinational talks on how to end the North’s nuclear programme stalled when tensions rose over the alleged North Korean sinking of a South Korean warship in March, in which 46 South Korean sailors died.

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