In admitting to uranium enrichment after years of denial, North Korea is putting the US on notice that it will do whatever it takes to keep its nuclear program, analysts say.
Pyongyang said on Friday it was in the final stage of enriching uranium — a second way to make nuclear bombs besides its known plutonium program. It marked a sharp change of tone after a month of easing tensions.
The announcement came as the US point man on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, tours the region in hopes of laying the groundwork for new denuclearization talks — which North Korea bolted from in April.
PHOTO: EPA
While cautioning that Pyongyang’s intentions are notoriously opaque, analysts suspected that North Korea was anticipating that US President Barack Obama’s administration would eventually sit down for talks.
“These may be efforts to lay down some markers or establish a position on some of these issues that they may anticipate will come up,” said Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Asia Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Obama administration has been pretty clear that the default position is to pursue diplomacy as an active tool to address these types of problems. It’s really the North Koreans that have put up roadblocks to that type of contact,” he said.
Since Obama took office, North Korean has tested an atom bomb and test-fired a series of missiles. But in recent weeks it freed two US reporters, reopened its borders to South Korean tourists and sent envoys to Los Angeles in hopes of resuming food aid.
Obama, while reaching out to US foes such as Iran and Cuba, has made few gestures to North Korea. The US State Department, which said it was “very concerned” by the latest developments, turned down a reported invitation by Pyongyang for Bosworth to visit.
Former US president George W. Bush’s administration first confronted North Korea in 2002 with allegations it was secretly enriching uranium, setting off a showdown.
North Korea initially boasted about uranium enrichment but then denied it in negotiations. Its latest admission came through a letter to the UN Security Council denouncing new sanctions.
Victor Cha, who served as Bush’s top adviser on North Korea, said the admission was “significant” as it showed that Pyongyang had brazenly defied earlier agreements not to enrich uranium.
Uranium work — also the focus of the West’s stand-off with Iran — can be conducted in small warehouses, which are difficult for foreign satellites to detect. By contrast, North Korea’s plutonium — used for its two nuclear tests — came from spent fuel rods at its closely watched Yongbyon reactor.
Until Friday’s statements, “experts believed the North was still years away from developing weapons from uranium,” said Cha, now an academic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University.
Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said that if North Korea was truly in the final stages of uranium enrichment, it would have run a program secretly for years — not since the UN sanctions in April as stated.
“North Korea has two pages in its playbook — one is provocation, brinkmanship and the raising of tensions and the other is seemingly conciliatory gestures,” he said.
He voiced surprise that North Korea switched tone just after the election of Japan’s new center-left government. Some experts believe Japan may moderate its line on North Korea, which was the toughest in defunct six-nation talks.
“I don’t think that this is an abandonment of the charm offensive,” Klingner said. “But it may be a signal that the charm offensive will not continue unless it generates some sort of positive response from the US and its allies.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS