North Korea Willing to Discuss Highly Enriched Uranium Program with U.S.: Seoul Official

Yonhap News ^ | February 19, 2004

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N.K. Willing to Discuss HEU Program with U.S.: Seoul Official

SEOUL, Feb. 19 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has allegedly informed a third country of its willingness to discuss its suspected nuclear program based on highly enriched uranium (HEU) with the United States.

"I am aware that the North recently told the third country it was willing to consult on the HEU issue with the U.S.," a senior government official said Thursday on customary condition of anonymity. "There are signs that the North's position is being changed."

Pyongyang's alleged about-face, which came six days before a second round of six-way talks on its nuclear program, touched off speculation that the North is serious about progress at the forthcoming nuclear talks, which are to open Feb. 25 in Beijing. Representatives of the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan will participate.

The Seoul official said although Pyongyang did not admit to the third country that it had a uranium-based nuclear program, it showed a different attitude from the past, when it made a complete denial.

In Washington, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton warned on Wednesday that North Korea's denial could derail Washington's commitment to resolve the nuclear crisis peacefully.

The six-way talks are basically about the North's plutonium-based program, and they may fall apart if Washington raises the issue of Pyongyang's suspected uranium-based program, analysts said.

The latest row was touched off in late 2002 when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said upon returning from a trip to Pyongyang that the North admitted to having a secret HEU program in violation of a 1994 accord with Washington.

Experts say a uranium-based nuclear program, which does not use a reactor, is easy to hide and difficult to detect and verify.

Until recently, the North had insisted that it neither possessed nor admitted to possessing a uranium program, but the U.S. asserted that the North has one and called for Pyongyang to confess all of its nuclear programs and promise to dismantle them at the upcoming talks.

In a surprise revelation earlier this month, Pakistan announced that its key nuclear physicist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed to secretly transferring nuclear technology to the North as well as to Iran and Libya.

Khan's confession backed Washington's claim that Pyongyang had run a secret nuclear program based on HEU in violation of a 1994 deal under which it agreed to freeze and eventually dismantle its plutonium-based bomb program.

But the communist country denied getting any help from Pakistan for its nuclear program and accused the United States of orchestrating Khan's "false" confession to use it as an excuse to launch an Iraq-style military attack.