N-material not supplied to N. Korea, Powell assured
By Masood Haider
NEW YORK, Oct 20: US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said on Sunday that Pakistan has assured that no nuclear technology has been supplied to North Korea by it, nor will be in the future.
He said that a 1994 US agreement with North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons programme was effectively nullified after Pyongyang admitted violating the deal.
Powell told NBC news programme “Meet the Press” that he talked to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Friday and “he gave me 400 per cent assurance” that Pakistan has not supplied any nuclear know-how to North Korea.
Asked about the past cooperation between the two countries, Powell said: “I cannot talk about the past; what is important is present.” He added, “Musharraf knows what the consequences of their actions will be.”
Powell said that US was consulting with the allies, Russia, Japan and China, as to what the consequences of North Korean action will be. The considerations include whether to continue with various provisions of the pact, under which Washington provides energy aid to North Korea in exchange for its pledge not to develop nuclear weapons.
“When we told North Korea a couple of weeks ago that we knew that they were participating in the enrichment of uranium, which was in violation of a number of agreements to include this one (the 1994 pact), they first denied it, then admitted it and said, ‘and therefore the agreement is nullified,”’ Powell said.
“Well, when you have an agreement between two parties and one says it’s nullified, then it looks like it’s nullified,” Powell said on this week’s ABC news show. He said that the future steps will be discussed with South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China and expected to continue talks at a summit of Asia-Pacific nations next weekend in Mexico, Powell said.
Under the 1994 agreement, the United States ships 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually to North Korea.
Powell, asked whether these shipments would be ended, said: “We’re looking at all of the things that rest on the agreed framework to see what is in our interest to keep doing, what is in our interest not to keep doing.”
He said it was essential that stored plutonium at a facility at Yongbyon remain under international monitoring. It would create an “extremely grave situation” if North Korea were to withdraw the plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, from supervision.
