| Submit your comments on this article |
| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Dupe entry: US details intel on Nork centrifuges, 'production-scale' capability |
| 2007-03-08 |
| From East Asia Intel, subscription. The first details about U.S. intelligence on North Korea’s covert uranium enrichment program were revealed in congressional testimony last week. Joseph DeTrani, Director of National Intelligence mission manager for Korea, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea has purchased uranium enrichment technology and has several dozen centrifuges that need to be accounted for as part of the six-nation accord reached in Beijing on Feb. 13. “On the uranium enrichment program, in 2002 October we confronted the North Koreans in Pyongyang with information they were acquiring material sufficient for a production-scale capability of enriching uranium, which was in violation of the North-South denuclearization, the NPT, and also the spirit of the Agreed Framework,” DeTrani said. Spirit of the Agreed Framework? Surely you jest, Mr. DeTrani. The NORKS violating the spirit of the agreement? It, just can't be. Better ask HalfBright about it. She knows everything. North Korea was confronted with the information and “admitted to having such a program,” he said, noting that immediately afterwards Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and asked international inspectors to leave. "Yep, you caught us. We're outta here. What you gonna do about it, Mac?" “The U.S. persists in our negotiations with them, saying that we need a declaration that speaks to your acquisitions, that spoke to a production-scale uranium-enrichment capability,” DeTrani said. DeTrani said North Korea must declare all nuclear programs, “including their acquisitions of materials necessary for a production-scale uranium-enrichment program, indeed, which they were making in the late '90s through the early 2000s.” And what will we do if the Norks don't declare? Are we a paper tiger or what? That is what we all want to know---Rantburgers and Norks. “And we still see elements of that program,” he said. DeTrani quoted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as writing in his book that North Korea obtained “a few dozen centrifuges, P1 and 2s, that were in violation of all those agreements.” North Korea was a consumer of the Pakistani covert nuclear supplier network headed by A.Q. Khan, and also had purchased uranium enrichment equipment, including specialty metal tubes from Germany in the early 2000s. Asked if the program existed or was just “aspirations” for uranium enrichment, DeTrani stated: “We had high confidence. The assessment was with high confidence that, indeed, they were making acquisitions necessary for, if you will, a production-scale program. And we still have confidence that the program is in existence, at the mid-confidence level.” |
| Posted by:Alaska Paul |
| #1 CAVUTO Guest > America can't afford to fail in Iraq and ME. Methinks its also safe to say by extens Amer can afford to fail anywhere else either, as the WOT > WAR FOR THE WORLD = SUBSTITUTION OF NATIONS-POWERS, etal. The "Status Quo" = Cold War-style USA-USSR/Commie Bloc competition and detente is no longer tolerable. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-03-08 22:11 |