N. KOREA: North Korea Started Uranium Program in 1990s, South Says

January 7, 2010

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea apparently began pursuing a uranium enrichment program in 1996 at the latest, the South Korean foreign minister said Wednesday, bolstering fears that the North’s second route to building a nuclear bomb could be well on its way..

The North’s nuclear program has long focused on a plutonium-making complex in Yongbyon, north of its capital. The country acknowledged for the first time last April that it intended to enrich uranium as well.

In June, it said its enrichment program was in an “experimental stage” while bitterly denouncing the United Nations for tightening sanctions after its nuclear test in May. In September, North Korea said its “experimental uranium enrichment” had entered a “completion phase.”

But the South Korean minister, Yu Myung-hwan, said Wednesday, “It appears that North Korea started its uranium enrichment program at least in 1996.” Speaking to the Yonhap news agency, in comments confirmed by his office, he said, “What’s clear is that the North began enriched uranium development quite early.”

Mr. Yu said many things remained unclear: “how far the program has advanced, how much enriched uranium and how many nuclear weapons they have.” He did not elaborate beyond saying that Seoul was in close consultation with Washington and other allies.

For years before North Korea officially announced the uranium program, American and South Korean officials had urged it to come clean on suspicions that it was pursuing uranium enrichment with technological help from Pakistani nuclear scientists.

North Korea said last year that it began the uranium enrichment to make fuel for nuclear power plants it hopes to build in the future. Both enriched uranium and plutonium can also be turned into fuel for atomic bombs.

In 1994, North Korea agreed to freeze and then dismantle the complex in Yongbyon. That facility, the only nuclear arms program the North has acknowledged, produced enough plutonium for at least half a dozen bombs, according to American estimates.

The 1994 deal collapsed in 2002 when North Korea rejected American demands that it respond to allegations that it was violating the accord by secretly pursuing uranium enrichment. Even after six-nation talks began in 2003 to try to produce a new agreement under which North Korea would give up its weapons program, the North tried to keep the talks focused on its Yongbyon program.

Its refusal to discuss enrichment eventually helped scuttle the six-nation talks in late 2008.

By then, North Korea had already demolished part of the Yongbyon facilities in return for Washington’s agreement to remove it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. During most of last year, North Korea pursued confrontation, conducting a nuclear test in May and test-firing a series of ballistic missiles. Last autumn, it began sending signals for talks.

The enrichment issue has added new urgency to resuming the six-nation talks, according to experts. North Korea is believed to be months, if not years, away from restarting its plutonium-producing reactor in Yongbyon.

Mr. Yu said he expected North Korea to return to the six-nation talks. But he denounced the North’s latest demand that the United States negotiate a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War before it considers giving up its nuclear weapons.

“That’s like saying it will never give up its nuclear programs, or it is a delaying tactic” to buy time to further its nuclear programs, he said.

Mr. Yu, who has expressed doubts in the past that North Korea will give up its nuclear arms, called for continued enforcement of United Nations sanctions.

View Article in The New York Times