TOKYO, Feb 8: North Korea launched a uranium-based nuclear weapons programme in 1996 under a deal with Pakistan, a top defector said in an interview published on Sunday.

The deal was concluded in Pakistan during a month-long visit by a North Korean envoy, Hwang Jang-Yop, former secretary in charge of international affairs in Korea's Workers Party, told the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper.

Mr Hwang said that Jon Pyon-Ho, then party's secretary in charge of military industry, "visited Pakistan for about a month in 1996 and signed the contract".

Mr Jon had previously consulted Mr Hwang on the possibility of buying plutonium from Russia and other countries to "produce more nuclear weapons", said Mr Hwang, 80, who in 1997 became the highest-ranking member of the North Korean regime to defect to the South. -AFP