Fresh fears were raised Sunday about North Korea's nuclear ambitions as an American scientist revealed he had toured a modern, new uranium enrichment plant equipped with at least 1,000 centrifuges.
Stanford University professor, Siegfried Hecker, said he visited the facility last week at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, outside the North Korean capital, adding it raised many questions about the secretive country's plans.
"It is possible that Pyonyang's latest moves are directed primarily at eventually generating much-needed electricity," he wrote in a report published online.
"Yet, the military potential of uranium enrichment technology is serious." Hecker, who is reported to have already briefed the White House, said he had been astonished by his findings. "Instead of seeing a few small cascades of centrifuges, which I believed to exist in North Korea, we saw a modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than a thousand centrifuges all neatly aligned and plumbed below us," he wrote.
The revelations came as the top US envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, was to arrive Sunday in Asia for talks with regional leaders on kick-starting stalled six-party nuclear talks with the impoverished North.
North Korea, which has carried out two nuclear tests, withdrew from the talks on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula - involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States - in 2009. The regime also announced last year it was restarting its Yongbyon complex after UN condemnation and sanctions.
The top US military officer said the revelations validated Washington's concerns over the isolated Stalinist state. "From my perspective, it's North Korea continuing on a path which is destabilising for the region," Admiral Mike Mullen told CNN.
Mullen said Pyongyang had routinely denied enriching uranium. "When I look at this, it is consistent with belligerent behaviour, and the kind of instability creation in a part of the world that is very dangerous," he added.
Hecker said North Korean scientists told him that construction work on the new facility dubbed the "Uranium Enrichment Workshop" had started in April 2009 and was completed just a few days ago.
The new facility included 2,000 centrifuges which were already producing low-grade enriched uranium to help fuel a nuclear power reactor, he was told, adding his guides insisted it was for a civilian nuclear electricity program.
The control-room of the facility "was astonishingly modern... and would fit into any modern American processing facility," Hecker wrote.
But he said the North Korean guides insisted the facility had been built and equipped with local know-how. Pyongyang is currently under UN sanctions in a bid to thwart its nuclear program.
"The 2,000-centrifuge capability significantly exceeds my estimates and that of most other analysts," Hecker wrote, but cautioned they could not confirm the facility was fully operational.
The scientist predicted the revelations would spark "a political firestorm," but called for caution when deciding how to proceed.
"Tightening sanctions further is likewise a dead end, particularly given the advances made in their nuclear program and the economic improvements we saw in general in Pyongyang. The only hope appears to be engagement."
US senior lawmaker John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the report was "troubling" and urged both the United Nations and China to step up enforcement of the sanctions.
"Only a comprehensive approach that can achieve security, peace, and development offers any hope of verifiably eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons," Kerry added.
Hecker, who used to direct the Los Alamos National Laboratory, had already revealed when he left North Korea that North Korean leaders claimed to be building an experimental light-water nuclear reactor to be completed by 2012.
Comments
Comments are closed.