US: N Korea plant ‘provocative’

South Korean Foreign Minister Kim and US envoy Stephen Bosworth share concerns about the North

Evidence of a new North Korean nuclear plant is disappointing and provocative, says the top US envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth.

But after talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-Hwan, he said the situation was not “a crisis”.

A US scientist said he been shown “more than 1,000 centrifuges” for enriching uranium on a visit to North Korea and had seen a new light-water reactor.

Enriched uranium can be used for nuclear fuel or made into weapons.

“This is obviously a disappointing announcement,” said Mr Bosworth. “It is also another in a series of provocative moves.

“We have been watching and analysing the (North’s) aspirations to produce enriched uranium for some time, it goes back several years.”

He said the new evidence showed North Korea to be in violation of a United Nations resolution.

Six-nation talks including the North had resolved in September 2005 to give aid, diplomatic and security benefits to the North if it ended its nuclear programmes.

Mr Bosworth said he thought future six-nation talks could still be held

“It’s still breathing and I still think we have a hope that we are going to be able to resuscitate it,” he said.

He did not rule out further talks with North Korea but said there would be no “talking just for the sake of talking”.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the new facility would allow the North to build “a number” of nuclear devices in addition to the hand ful it is believed to have already.

The US head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm Mike Mullen, said the new nuclear facility was further evidence of Pyongyang’s “belligerent behaviour”, and that North Korea was “continuing on a path which is destabilising for the region”.

The US is hoping to revive six-party talks over the North’s nuclear facilities based at Yongbyon

Guide: Nuclear fuel cycle

“It confirms or validates the concern we’ve had for years about their enriching uranium, which they’ve denied routinely,” he said.

In September last year, after having denied enriching uranium, North Korea said it was in the final stage of uranium enrichment, and further warned that it was continuing to reprocess and weaponise plutonium.

Adm Mullen said the latest report of the North’s nuclear activity should be seen in the light of the March sinking of a South Korean warship, which Seoul and Washington blamed on Pyongyang.

The sinking of the Cheonan in a suspected torpedo attack left 46 South Korean sailors dead and inflamed tensions on the Korean peninsula.

His remarks followed the publication of a report by US nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker on his trip last week to North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex, which is about 100km (60 miles) north of the capital Pyongyang.

He said he had been shown an experimental light-water nuclear reactor that was still under construction and a new facility that contained “more than 1,000 centrifuges” that the North Koreans told him was processing low-enriched uranium for fuel for the new reactor.

The North Koreans told him the facility contained 2,000 centrifuges.

He said the facility seemed designed primarily for civilian nuclear power but could be easily converted to further process uranium to weapons grade.

The plant was modern and clean, unlike all the other Yongbyon facilities he had seen, and he was stunned at how sophisticated it was, the Stanford University scientist said.

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

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