Posted on 07/26/2003 5:27:03 PM PDT by blam
We will start testing nuclear bombs, says defiant N Korea
(Filed: 27/07/2003)
US fears that declaration could be prelude to an atomic attack, writes Julian Coman
North Korea has raised the stakes dramatically in its confrontation with the United States by privately threatening to conduct its first underground nuclear test, it emerged yesterday.
A senior official of the hardline Communist regime warned in New York that his country would take counter-measures, "for example, a nuclear test", if the US did not ease pressure on his isolated country.
The warning, by Han Sung Ryol, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, was delivered to an American official earlier this month, according to reports circulating in Tokyo yesterday.
The test would be conducted inside a tunnel dug into a mountain in the run-up to September 9, the anniversary of the the republic's foundation, the respected Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported.
Meanwhile North Korea is set to announce that it has become the world's ninth nuclear power, should Washington not offer a non-aggression guarantee in return for abandoning its nuclear programme, say officials in Tokyo close to the Pyongyang regime.
Senior American officials, who are reluctant to rule out future military action, fear that the warning shows that the rogue state's relations with the United States are out of control.
William Perry, a former secretary of defence under President Clinton, warned that Pyongyang may have acquired six to eight nuclear weapons by the end of the year, allowing the regime to target Japan, South Korea and even Hawaii in the United States.
"I think we are losing control of the situation," he said. "The nuclear programme underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities."
In an effort to block any export of weapons from North Korea, the United States has assembled a group of 10 other nations, including Britain, which have agreed to intercept suspicious North Korean shipping.
The interception programme is "ready to rock and roll right now", said one State Department official. "All we need is actionable intelligence." Pyongyang has stated that any attempt to impose sanctions or a blockade would be treated as a "declaration of war".
The deteriorating situation has fuelled growing fears of an arms race in south-east Asia, with Russia and Japan watching the stand-off between North Korea and the US with growing trepidation.
Japan has already begun to re-think its post-war pacifist stance while Russia's deputy foreign minister, Alexander Losyukov, said that Moscow had begun to take steps to defend itself from the possible use of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.
Pravda reported that "testing of the civil defence resources has already started in the districts bordering North Korea". The head of Moscow's Institute of Strategic Studies, Alexander Konovalov, said that confirmation of a North Korean nuclear arsenal would "have critical consequences worldwide".
Despite the moves to blockade shipping, the Bush administration appears increasingly divided over how to deal with the crisis. State Department officials indicated last week that a written security guarantee to North Korea might be possible, but the suggestion was immediately dismissed by the White House. "We've made it clear that we will not give in to blackmail," said Scott McLellan, the White House spokesman.
In the Pentagon, meanwhile, hawks are privately discussing the possibility of launching a "surgical strike" similar to the Israeli raid carried out on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. A State Department official told The Telegraph: "More than a few people are worried about where we might end up six months down the road. This impasse is not going to be the status quo for ever."
Under its eccentric dictator Kim Jong Il, Pyongyang has never officially claimed membership of the "nuclear club", though it recognised last October that it was pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme. The eight countries acknowledged to possess nuclear weapons are the US, Britain, Russia, France, China, Pakistan, India and Israel.
In 2001, President Bush named North Korea as the third member of an "axis of evil" alongside Iran and Iraq. Since last October, North Korea has expelled international inspectors, rebuilt a derelict nuclear facility and reprocessed up to 8000 spent fuel rods in order to prepare plutonium for nuclear bombs. The Central Intelligence Agency has suspected for some time that the regime already has at least one nuclear weapon.
The White House is counting on multilateral negotiations involving China, South Korea and Japan to defuse the situation.
The next generation has already been tested, it's called MOAB.
MOAB Mother Of All Bombs.
No, it doesn't. It (like all communist countries) is starving her own people, discontent is rampant, and things are coming to a head quickly. They won't survive the winter.
Kim is going to get a bullet in the head, by the guy next to him.
Don't know.
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