June 10, 2003

North Korea admits intention to build nuclear weapons

By Phil Reeves

North Korea's nerve-wracking stand-off with the United States took a startling twist yesterday when the Stalinist state explicitly admitted its intention to build nuclear weapons - but provided a brand new reason for doing so.

Analysts in Washington were last night studying the latest utterance from Kim Jong-il's regime which said it wants "to build up a nuclear deterrent force" in order to cut the country's conventional forces - with 1.1m troops, the fifth largest army in the world - and to divert funds into the economy.

The statement was the latest punch to be thrown by North Korea in its complex bout of shadow-boxing with the US which began last year when the Americans discovered that it was violating a non-nuclear agreement by operating a secret uranium-enrichment programme. Since then the North Koreans have adopted an increasingly noisy and belligerent posture, dictated by their fears over the American post-9/11 policy of pre-emptive strikes, and their presence within George Bush's "axis of evil".

In the last six months, North Korea has restarted an atomic reactor, thrown out UN nuclear inspectors, begun moving spent fuel rods to a reprocessing facility that can produce plutonium, and become the first country to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Relayed by the government mouthpiece, the KCNA news agency, Pyongyang's statement yesterday was the clearest public admission so far that it is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

This is not North Korea's first use of this tactic in an effort to pressure the US to comply with its overall goal - bilateral talks leading to an agreement guaranteeing their nation's survival. North Korean officials told American diplomats that Pyongyang has nuclear weapons during three-way talks in China in April; they also implied that these weapons had already been deployed.

The US wants multilateral talks, and has insisted it will not be blackmailed by Kim Jong-il's nuclear threats. However, Washington's position has been complicated by the striking contrast between its handling of North Korea - which has acquired nuclear weapons - and Iraq, which apparently had not.

This time it wants a diplomatic resolution, mindful that the North Koreans have thousands of artillery pieces within range of Seoul, and of the 37,000 US troops stationed in South Korea.

Yesterday's KCNA statement said that North Korea would have "no option but to build up a nuclear deterrent force" if the United States "keeps threatening (North Korea) with nukes instead of abandoning its hostile policy towards Pyongyang."

But it continued: "We are not trying to possess a nuclear deterrent in order to blackmail others but we are trying to reduce conventional weapons and divert our human and monetary resources to economic development and improve the living standards of the people."

North Korea's latest manouevre - the first attempt to link the atomic programme with cuts in conventional forces - is unlikely to impress the Americans. The US's chief ally, Britain, was among the first to speak out: Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister, accused Pyongyang of issuing contradictory messages. It should give up its nuclear weapons, or "we'd be looking at an alternative route of containment and sanctions," he said.

Copyright the Independent of London. This story is published by arrangement with the Independent syndicate.