North Korea said on Tuesday it would conduct a nuclear test in the future but would never use atomic weapons first and remained committed to the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang’s KCNA news agency reported.
Analysts say the reclusive state, which shocked the region in July with a series of missile tests, has enough fissile material to make at least six to eight nuclear bombs but probably lacks the ability to make a weapon small enough to mount on a missile.
Any nuclear tests would probably be seen as a move to grab attention and force the United States into direct talks.
”The US daily increasing threat of a nuclear war and its vicious sanctions and pressure have caused a grave situation on the Korean peninsula in which the supreme interests and security of our state are seriously infringed upon and the Korean nation stands at the crossroads of life and death,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried on KCNA.
Referring to what it called a new measure to ”bolster its war deterrent for self-defence”, Pyongyang said: ”Firstly, the field of scientific research of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] will in the future conduct a nuclear test under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed.”
It added that North Korea would never use nuclear weapons first and would ”do its utmost to realise the denuclearisation of the peninsula and give impetus to the world-wide nuclear disarmament and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons”.
Pyongyang accuses Washington of trying to topple its government through a crackdown on its finances.
It wants this ended before it will return to international talks to end its nuclear weapons programme.
The United States refuses to end the crackdown, which analysts say is causing Pyongyang’s leadership real difficulties, or to hold direct talks with North Korea outside the six-country nuclear negotiations.
The talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have been stalled since November.
Meanhile, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said the test plan was ”totally unforgivable”, Kyodo news agency said on Tuesday.
He added that the possibility could not be ruled out and that if such a test did take place, Tokyo would react ”harshly” in concert with the international community.
Western experts have said no one knows for sure whether North Korea has actually built a nuclear weapon. The country declared itself a nuclear weapons power in February 2005, without testing.
Although it aspires to be a nuclear weapons power, North Korea has trouble feeding its own people and experts said widespread floods in July could push it back into famine.
North Korea’s nuclear capability
The facility
North Korea’s nuclear programme is centred at Yongbyon, about 100km north of Pyongyang. The complex consists of a five-megawatt reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant, where weapons-grade material would be extracted from spent fuel rods.
Extracting fissile material
Experts and intelligence reports indicated that North Korea had extracted enough fissile material from Yongbyon to produce one or two nuclear weapons by the early 1990s.
In October 1994, the United States and North Korea struck a deal to freeze the Yongbyon complex in exchange for more proliferation-resistant reactors to be built by an international consortium. That project has been cancelled.
Escalation
In October 2003, Pyongyang said it had enhanced its nuclear deterrent by reprocessing 8 000 spent fuel rods from Yongbyon. US intelligence experts said the North could extract enough fissile material from those rods for another four to six weapons.
In February 2005, North Korea declared for the first time it had nuclear weapons.
In May 2005, North Korea said it had extracted more fuel rods from Yongbyon. Proliferation experts said this could eventually provide enough material for another two or three atomic bombs.
The tally
A conservative estimate would be that North Korea has enough fissile material for at least six to eight nuclear weapons, proliferation experts have said, with some saying it could have enough for more than a dozen.
Delivering a weapon
It is impossible to say whether North Korea has built a workable nuclear weapon. Experts said the secretive state has conducted many tests on nuclear bomb-related technologies.
North Korea has an extensive missile programme but no one is sure if the North can make a nuclear weapon small enough to mount on a warhead.
The North test-fired seven missiles on July 5, including its long-range Taepodong-2 with a range some experts said could one day reach US territory. – Reuters