North Korea may have enough weapons-grade plutonium to make up to six nuclear bombs, the head of the UN atomic watchdog agency said in another warning about the reclusive regime's secretive nuclear program.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Cable News Network on Sunday evening that Pyongyang has the nuclear infrastructure to convert the material into atomic weapons.
"We knew they had the plutonium that could be converted into five or six North Korea weapons," ElBaradei told CNN.
Recent satellite imagery suggests North Korea may be preparing to test a weapon underground, and the IAEA has been urging the international community to increase pressure on Pyongyang to refrain from any such test.
IAEA inspectors were expelled from North Korea in 2002, and the agency has stressed that there is no way to know for sure whether the country is close to producing a nuclear weapon or is getting ready to test one.
Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said yesterday that estimates of the amount of nuclear material North Korea holds were based on pre-expulsion inspections of the country's 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon.
"When our inspectors were there, they were monitoring the freeze at the Yongbyon facility and in particular the 8,000 spent fuel rods that were stored there," he said. "We can estimate the amount of plutonium they could contain."
ElBaradei described the latest developments as a "cry for help" on Pyongyang's part.
"North Korea, I think, has been seeking a dialogue with the United States, with the rest of the international community ... through their usual policy of nuclear blackmail, nuclear brinkmanship, to force the other parties to engage them," he said.
"We know that they had the industrial infrastructure to weaponize this plutonium. We have read also that they have the delivery system," ElBaradei told CNN. "I do hope that the North Koreans would absolutely reconsider such a reckless, reckless step."
Last month, diplomats told reporters that the US was warning its allies that North Korea may be ready to carry out a nuclear test as early as June, basing the assessment in part on satellite photographs that suggested it was digging an underground test site.
The reported US warnings reflected growing fears in Washington that the North is going ahead with efforts to develop nuclear weapons after South Korean officials said Pyongyang had recently shut down a reactor, possibly to harvest plutonium that could be used in an underground test.
The Yongbyon reactor generated spent fuel rods laced with plutonium, but they must be removed and reprocessed to extract the plutonium for use in an atomic weapon. They can be removed only if the reactor has been shut down.
The US intelligence community believes North Korea has one or more nuclear weapons, and has untested two- and three-stage missiles capable of reaching US soil. But it has been unclear whether Pyongyang has yet developed the technology to miniaturize a nuclear weapon so it fits on a missile.
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