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North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, in 2003.

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Reaction in China: Leaders Caught in a Quandary


North Korea Says It Has Nuclear Weapons and Rejects Talks


Published: February 10, 2005

(Page 2 of 2)

In the same statement, North Korea also attacked Japan for "toeing the U.S. line." Tokyo has been struggling with mounting popular pressure for economic sanctions. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Koizumi personally received a petition calling for sanctions, signed by five million people.

Japanese anger with North Korea rose sharply last month after Pyong- yang delivered to visiting Japanese dip- lomats two boxes of half-cremated re- mains, said to be of a Japanese woman kidnapped from Japan by North Korean agents in the 1970s. DNA analysis showed that the remains were not of the missing Japanese woman, but of two unidentified people. It is unclear if North Korea, which tightly controls in- formation from the outside world, was aware of DNA technology. Its state- ment today charged that Japan had "fabricated the issue of false re- mains over the abduction issue."

Conservative Japanese increasingly say Mr. Koizumi should call the bluff of what they say is a bankrupt state that routinely hides behind scary bluster.

"At first, we should make economic sanctions," Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo's conservative governor said in an interview this afternoon, just before North Korea's nuclear weapons vow was made public.

"At the second stage, let them bomb Japan with that nasty missile," Mr. Ishihara taunted with sarcasm in his voice as he spoke in his office, in Tokyo's tallest building. "Their missile cannot load a nuclear warhead." Asked what Japan would do in response to a missile attack, Mr. Ishihara merely smiled.

The United States has said that North Korea has up to eight nuclear bombs. But, it has never exploded a nuclear device.

One year ago, Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., toured Yongbyon, North Korea's main known nuclear facility. Although North Korea apparently organized the visit to persuade Americans of their nuclear weapons prowess, Dr. Hecker returned home saying that he was not convinced North Korea could build a working nuclear bomb and mount it on a missile.

Half a century after the Korean War, North Korea has not signed a formal peace treaty with South Korea and its main ally, the United States. In September 1991, in an effort to denuclearize the divided peninsula, President George H..W. Bush announced the withdrawal of all American tactical weapons from South Korea, totaling about 100. In December 1991, both Koreas signed a formal agreement pledging not to produce, test or store nuclear weapons.

Over the next decade, South Korea conducted what now appear to be several minor, disconnected experiments in technology related to nuclear weapons. North Korea agreed to seal a plutonium-based nuclear program. But in 2002, an American official confronted Pyongyang with evidence that it had been cheating on its nuclear promises, maintaining a covert uranium enrichment program.

In response, North Korea expelled international inspectors from Yongbyon, announced that it was quitting the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and said it was building up what it ambiguously called its "nuclear deterrent." The six-nation disarmament talks started in Beijing in August 2003, but have not yielded any tangible results.


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