March 14, 2003	Friday	Muharram 10, 1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

SEOUL, March 13: South Korea on Thursday urged North Korea to defuse its nuclear standoff through multilateral talks as Washington warned that the communist country was just months away from enriching uranium to make atomic bombs.

The uranium programme is the second of two nuclear programmes Washington says North Korea can use to create weapons. But it was largely believed to be underdeveloped compared to the first programme, which used plutonium.

Washington says the plutonium project is already capable of yielding enough weapons-grade plutonium to build six to eight nuclear bombs within months.

In a new warning about the uranium programme, US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said it too was well on its way.

“It is only probably a matter of months, and not years, behind the plutonium,” Mr Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington.

With the dispute dragging on, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan criticized Pyongyang’s objections to multilateral talks as “illogical” on Thursday. A day earlier, he urged Washington for more willingness to resolve the dispute over Pyongyang’s nuclear programmes.

“North Korea must come out with a more open stance,” Mr Yoon told South Korea’s MBC radio.

North Korea insists on direct talks with the United States, but Washington rejects the demand as a ploy to extract more economic concessions.

Mr Yoon said the eventual solution of the nuclear crisis would involve economic aid for the impoverished country, inevitably from Russia, China, Japan and South Korea as well as the United States.

“It’s illogical to exclude the potential aid providers from the talks,” Mr Yoon said.

Seoul wants the two adversaries to use both direct and multilateral approaches to end the dispute peacefully through dialogue.

In Washington, Mr Kelly said Pyongyang must agree to eliminate its nuclear weapons programmes and meet US requirements in five other areas — human rights, terrorism, missile development and export, and conventional forces near South Korea’s border — for Washington to fully engage with the communist state.

He added that there was “not the slightest sign” that North Korea would give up its nuclear ambitions.

North Korea said on Thursday that Washington’s refusal to open direct talks proved that it intended to attack the communist country.

“We want peace, but we will not be forced to disarm and beg for slave-like peace, fearing a war,” the North’s official Central Radio said, as monitored by the South’s Yonhap news agency.

Meanwhile at the United Nations, China has blocked the US efforts to reach an agreement among the five permanent Security Council members on a statement that would condemn Pyongyang’s decision to pull out of a key nuclear arms-control treaty, diplomats from some of the council member said on conditions of anonymity.

Separately, Japan has sent a high-tech surveillance warship to the sea off the Korean Peninsula, amid media reports that Pyongyang could be preparing a ballistic missile test.

The Defence Agency said on Thursday the destroyer, with top-of-the-line Aegis surveillance capabilities, has been dispatched to the sea between Japan and North Korea.

The Yomiuri, Japan’s largest newspaper, said US military official notified Tokyo that Pyongyang appeared to be making final preparations to test-fire its Rodong ballistic missile.

The US Air Force also prepared to resume reconnaissance flights in that area, suspended since communist jets briefly intercepted a US reconnaissance plane 10 days ago, a senior US official said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Gen Leon J. Laporte, the commander of the 37,000 US forces in South Korea, told the House Armed Services Committee in Washington that additional provocations of US surveillance planes were possible, as well as missile tests and additional steps toward producing nuclear weapons.

Admiral Thomas Fargo, commander of US Pacific Command, whose area of responsibility includes Korea, told the committee that he saw the probability of war on the Korean Peninsula as “low right now.”

The dispute flared in October, when US officials said North Korea admitted having the uranium programme. Washington and its allies suspended fuel shipments; the North retaliated by expelling UN monitors, withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarting a nuclear reactor. —AP