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North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su-hon, currently attending the UN general assembly¡¯s annual ministerial meeting, disclosed on Monday that the North has reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into weapons-grade. Vice Minister Choe emphasized North Korea¡¯s nuclear deterrent capabilities, at a press conference with foreign news reporters.
According to some news reports, Vice Minister Choe's statements were misreported because spent fuel rods cannot discharge the concentrated uranium needed to create weapons.
As for rumors of North Korea¡¯s ballistic missile testing, Vice Minister Choe remarked that the North is capable of manufacturing various kinds of missiles and that his country has nothing to conceal. He went on to deny recent Japanese media reports of specific ballistic missile tests, however, calling those reports incorrect and trivial.
Choe stated at a press conference just after his opening speech at the annual meeting of the UN general assembly that the dangers of war on the Korean peninsula are higher due to U.S. policy against North Korea and that the North is justified in having a nuclear deterrence, reported news agencies. Those attending the press conference included foreign press agencies such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Deutsche Presse Agentur.
AP reported that Vice Minister Choe, on the question of whether fuel had been turned into actual weapons and not just weapons-grade material, replied that ¡°we've already declared we weaponized them." AFP reported that statements made by Vice Minister Choe were unprecedentedly and uncharacteristically clear, adding that Pyongyang has used expressions like 'nuclear deterrence' to reflect its nuclear capabilities.
The U.S. warned on Monday (local time) that if North Korea continues to refuse to take part in the six-nation talks at Beijing, the U.S. would take it up with the UN Security Council. If the North Koreans continue to stonewall the issues, then the Security Council could be the next logical step, said U.S. Under Secretary of State John Bolton after his speech at a conference of the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday, reported AFP. Although the Security Council touched on the North Korean problem early last year, when the North withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and expelled International Atomic Energy Association inspectors, the council had failed to reach a resolution.
(Lee Ha-won, may2@chosun.com )
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