NKorea developing nuke warhead: Seoul official

NUKEWARS

Rice insists NKorea meet verification standards
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted Wednesday that North Korea meet proper standards for verifying its nuclear disarmament as she pursued efforts to break a deadlock in negotiations. Rice and other officials meanwhile kept a tight lid on the upshot of talks that US negotiator Christopher Hill held with North Korean officials last week in a bid to break the deadlock. "We are continuing to work on it. This is an issue of whether the verification protocol meets our standards," Rice told reporters when asked if North Korea and the United States had reached a compromise in the talks. "And so I will get back to you when we have something," Rice said. Washington is working on a compromise deal by letting Pyongyang first give China a plan to verify its disarmament efforts rather than to all five negotiating partners, a US State Department official told reporters last week. The official, who asked not to be named, said the original idea was for North Korea to give the plan to South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States rather than just to its ally China. He said he expected Hill to make such a proposal to the North Koreans. Outlining the sequence of steps, The Washington Post reported that after the United States provisionally removes the North from a terrorism blacklist, China would announce North Korea's acceptance of the verification plan. This would allow Pyongyang to assert that the delisting occurred before the verification plan was in place. Under a six-nation deal reached in 2007, North Korea began disabling -- with a view toward total disarmament -- its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for energy and other aid. Pyongyang accuses Washington of breaching the deal by failing to remove it from the blacklist. The United States says the North must first agree to outside verification of a nuclear declaration it submitted in June. The North counters that verification is not part of this stage of the agreement.

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Oct 8, 2008
North Korea is working to develop a nuclear warhead for a long-range missile, South Korea's top military officer said Wednesday, a day after the communist state tested its short-range weaponry.

"I understand that North Korea is working to develop a small nuclear warhead which can be loaded into a missile," Kim Tae-Young, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was quoted by Yonhap news agency as telling legislators.

Kim said he could not say whether the North had already succeeded in developing such a warhead. His office confirmed the comments.

North Korea, which has been pursuing a nuclear programme for decades and tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, is long thought to have been trying to produce a nuclear warhead.

But public confirmation by a top Seoul official is unusual.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was also quoted as saying the North could make six or seven warheads, given an estimated plutonium stockpile of 40 kilos (88 pounds).

Two years ago, Seoul's then-defence minister Yoon Kwang-Ung said the North was believed to be developing nuclear warheads for its missiles but needed "a few more years" before it could produce them.

A six-nation nuclear disarmament deal is currently close to collapse, with the North vowing to soon resume the processing of bomb-making plutonium.

Top US negotiator Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang last week and reported "very substantive" talks, but no details have emerged.

On Tuesday, the North test-fired short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea.

A South Korean defence ministry official called the launches "part of routine military exercises" but gave no details.

Local media reports say one or two missiles were fired -- either surface-to-ship KN-01 or KN-02 types or Russian-designed ship-to-ship Styx.

The North has carried out such short-range launches many times before, but analysts say they are sometimes timed to make a political point.

The disarmament deal is deadlocked because of a dispute over verification of the North's nuclear programme.

The secretive communist state is angry at a US-inspired verification plan which reportedly calls for it to open up undeclared suspected nuclear facilities and to let inspectors take samples of material.

The North has hundreds of short-range missiles, many of which are stationed close to the border within easy striking range of Seoul.

It has also developed long-range weaponry capable of threatening countries outside the Korean peninsula. In 1998 it test-launched a Taepodong-1 missile which overflew Japan, sparking alarm in Tokyo.

A Taepodong-2 was test-launched in July 2006 from the same site at Musudan-ri on the east coast but failed.

A news report last week said the North was upgrading the site in preparation for a test-launch of a new long-range missile.

South Korea's Dong-A Ilbo newspaper said intelligence authorities believe the North is preparing to test-fire an advanced model of the Taepodong-2 which could theoretically hit parts of the US west coast.

It said the modified model would have a range of 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) compared to 6,700 kilometres currently.

In September South Korean Defence Minister Lee Sang-Hee confirmed US reports that the North is building a new launch site for long-range missiles on its west coast.

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NUKEWARS

US envoy in China for talks on NKorea nuclear deal

Beijing (AFP) Oct 4, 2008
US envoy Christopher Hill held talks Saturday with his Chinese counterpart amid stepped-up efforts to salvage a crumbling North Korean nuclear disarmament deal, a US embassy spokesman said.

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