The US has said a report that North Korea has built a new
nuclear facility is further evidence of Pyongyang’s “belligerent
behaviour”.
The top US military officer, Adm Mike Mullen, said North
Korea was “continuing on a path which is destabilising for the
region”.
A US scientist said he been shown “more than 1,000
centrifuges” for enriching uranium on a visit to North Korea.
Enriched uranium can be used for nuclear fuel or made
into weapons.
“From my perspective, it’s North Korea continuing on
a path which is destabilising for the region,” Adm Mullen, the head of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN.
“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.
“All of this is consistent with belligerent
behaviour, the kind of instability creation in a part of the world that is very
dangerous,” Adm Mullen said.
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.
He also said the North Koreans told him the new plant was
“constructed and operated strictly with indigenous resources and
talent”.
When international weapons inspectors were expelled from
North Korea in 2009, the plant did not exist, officials say.
The North is believed to have weaponised enough plutonium
for at least six atomic bombs but is not known to have a uranium-based weapons
programme.
The report came as Stephen Bosworth, a senior US state
department official responsible for North Korea, was travelling to Asia to try
to revive six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
Beginning with a stop in the South Korean capital Seoul,
Mr Bosworth will then travel to Tokyo and Beijing.
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 deepen suspicions that it is receiving help from abroad
in circumventing United Nations sanctions, correspondents say.
The North has reportedly expressed a conditional
willingness to return to the stalled talks and some analysts suggest it may
have revealed these new uranium enrichment facilities in a bid to strengthen
its negotiating hand.
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