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National Intelligence Service chief Ko Young-koo on Friday told the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee there was ¡°no convincing evidence¡± North Korea was preparing for a nuclear test. He added South Korea and the U.S. had monitored the digging of a tunnel of indeterminate use in the area of Kilju, North Hamgyeong Province, where reports claimed a test was being prepared, since the late 1990s.
Meanwhile, during a closed discussion with an opposition Grand National Party strategy committee, South Korea¡¯s former U.S. ambassador Han Seung-joo said absence of a joint strategy between Seoul and Washington in the North Korean nuclear dispute played into Pyongyang¡¯s hands. GNP lawmakers quoted Han as saying the situation was likely to get worse.
"It's our government's typical pattern to say that North Korea's aim is to strengthen its negotiating position, but its aim is actually to make its possession of nuclear weapons a fait accompli, like Pakistan," they quoted Han as saying. "The issue is being glossed over, from debate over whether the North has nuclear weapons or not to debate now over whether it will test one or not.¡± He said Pyongyang now stood to earn recognition as a ¡°rational power¡± if it announced it was calling off a nuclear test.
"During the first nuclear crisis in 1994, an attack on North Korea's nuclear facilities was possible, but now, because the U.S. doesn't know where the nuclear materials already produced are, it wouldn't be easy," Han said.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told CNN on Wednesday that North Korea was ¡°a horrible regime¡± considering its oppression of its own people, the starvation its people suffer and its forced labor camps. She vowed Washington would pay attention to these matters in the future but insisted it had no intention to attack the North.
The Chinese Communist Party¡¯s foreign affairs chief Wang Jiarui on Thursday said Beijing would ¡°respond strongly¡± if North Korea tested a nuclear device, according to Yoshito Sengoku, a leading member of Japan's main opposition Democratic Party who is visiting China.
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