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China-Japan-Koreas | |||||
Norks Contradicts U.S. Intel on Plutonium Program | |||||
2008-06-01 | |||||
Bush administration officials have declined to comment on the declaration, which State Department officials say will take weeks to study, but they have indicated that North Korea is acknowledging it produced 37 kilograms of plutonium, or about 81 pounds. That total would be more than the 30 kilograms that North Korea has acknowledged previously but somewhat less than the 40 to 50 kilograms that American intelligence agencies had calculated in the past. Estimates on how many nuclear bombs North Korea could wring from its plutonium program have ranged from 6 to 10.
“We’re coming to an important juncture in this process,” Christopher R. Hill, the chief North Korea nuclear negotiator, told reporters in Moscow on Friday after meeting with his Russian counterpart and after meetings this week in Beijing with North Korean officials. Mr. Hill said that the North Koreans were working very hard on the overall plutonium declaration. State Department officials have assembled a team of reactor experts and translators to go through the seven boxes of plutonium documents in hand. The documents go back to 1987 and contain information about North Korea’s three major campaigns to reprocess plutonium for weapons — in 1990, 2003 and 2005, administration officials said. The documents do not include any information about North Korea’s uranium program or proliferation activities. The declaration is part of what officials call a six-party nuclear agreement — still a work in progress — among North Korea, the United States, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The declaration and the agreement are facing skepticism from Congress and from more hard-line North Korea experts who say that the North cannot be trusted.
Tom Casey, the deputy spokesman for the State Department, said: “With all due respect to Mr. Pritchard, he’s a former government official. I’m not sure who he’s talking to. But I think the secretary, the president and Chris Hill have all made clear that we expect the North Koreans to provide us a declaration that meets the requirements of the six parties.”
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Posted by:Steve White |