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.

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JAPAN: Japan’s Finance Minister Quits, Citing Poor Health

Left, Naoto Kan, successor to Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii, center, last year with Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano.  Issei Kato/Reuters

January 7, 2010

By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — Dealing another blow to the fledgling government, the Japanese finance minister resigned Wednesday, leaving Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to appoint a successor with little fiscal experience to grapple with financing an ambitious campaign agenda, a growing public debt and a fading economic recovery.

Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan, a founder of the governing Democratic Party and the minister in charge of economic policy and state strategy, will succeed the finance minister, Hirohisa Fujii, Mr. Hatoyama said.

Mr. Fujii, 77, cited fatigue and deteriorating health as the reasons for his resignation, which was tendered just as the government was preparing to shepherd through Parliament a record $1 trillion budget for the fiscal year that starts in April.

Mr. Kan, 63, a former activist and champion of reducing the authority of bureaucrats, is seen as having the political influence but none of the financial expertise of Mr. Fujii. A fiscal conservative and former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Mr. Fujii was considered a valuable experienced hand in the cabinet of Mr. Hatoyama, whose Democratic Party came to power in September.

Investors saw Mr. Fujii as a reassuring check on the left-leaning government’s spending plans. In recent months he had wrangled with ministries over budget cuts as Japan struggled to restrain its public debt, which is close to twice the size of the gross domestic product.

But the Democrats also want to finance an ambitious social agenda, including payments to families with children and free public high school education. The agenda formed the cornerstone of their campaign proposals.

Some analysts attributed Mr. Fujii’s departure to a rift with the Democratic Party’s powerful secretary general, Ichiro Ozawa, who has pushed through a series of changes in the government’s fiscal policy. Last month, Mr. Ozawa publicly criticized Mr. Fujii’s budgeting process, questioning whether the finance minister was doing enough to curb the power of Japanese bureaucrats, who have maintained control of the country’s budget for decades.

It will now be up to Mr. Kan to guide the budget through Parliament, which convenes this month, and to draft additional stimulus packages that analysts expect will be necessary to sustain an economic recovery.

Mr. Kan has argued for more stimulus measures, saying that Japan faced a slide back into recession. But in recent months, he has also expressed caution against a budget so big that it could sharply increase the nation’s debt.

Mr. Hatoyama expressed confidence in Mr. Kan. “I wanted to appoint a successor who has worked most closely with the finance minister,” Mr. Hatoyama said.

Mr. Kan later said that he intended “to do the utmost as finance minister.”

Still, analysts called Mr. Fujii’s resignation a big setback for Mr. Hatoyama’s government.

“Mr. Fujii was one of Mr. Hatoyama’s most active and visible ministers,” said Yoshiaki Kobayashi, professor of Japanese politics at Keio University. “Mr. Kan is a good politician, but fiscal and economic policy is not his expertise at all.”

Mr. Fujii, suffering from exhaustion and high blood pressure, checked into a hospital on Dec. 28, and had been commuting to work from there.

Mr. Hatoyama had at first urged Mr. Fujii to remain in his post to present the coming fiscal year’s budget to Parliament. But the prime minister said late Wednesday that Mr. Fujii had tendered his resignation and that the government had no choice but to accept it.

Public approval ratings for Mr. Hatoyama’s government have slid from postelection highs of more than 70 percent to less than 50 percent in recent polls.

Mr. Kan will be the sixth Japanese finance minister since August 2008.

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