N.Korea's alleged nuke progress causes alarm

Revelations about North Korea's latest uranium-enrichment program point at the country seeking more bargaining chips ahead of any resumption of international talks on denuclearization, analysts suggested Monday.

The New York Times reported that Pyongyang gave US nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker a tour of a vast, new plant to enrich uranium with "hundreds and hundreds" of centrifuges installed.

Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, concluded after his trip that the North had been building its nuclear facility in secret and at remarkable speed.

In his report, Hecker described that he was left stunned at the sophistication of the "industrial-scale uranium-enrichment facility with 2,000 centrifuges," according to the newspaper.

However, Pyongyang did not comment on the report.

"If this information is true, then this is a serious problem," an anonymous official with the South Korean Defense Ministry told The New York Times Monday.

The US special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, Monday called for a calm response to this new development.

"It is the latest in a series of provocative moves by the DPRK," Bosworth told reporters in Seoul Monday, adding "it is a very difficult problem we have been struggling to deal with for 20 years."

"We've known about this for some time. It's a very unfortunate development, but it's not a crisis," Bosworth said in a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, according to local media.

Reuters reported that Bosworth promised that the US government would continue liaising closely with its regional partners in response.

Lü Chao, director of the Center of South Korea studies at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that these claims concerning new nuclear facilities were calculated to push Washington into returning to talks with Pyongyang.

By Liu Linlin, Global Times
【1】 【2】