South Korea says North reprocessing not confirmed

SEOUL - South Korea says it has "no scientific evidence" to back reports North Korea has reprocessed all its spent nuclear fuel rods, a development that would enable Pyongyang to build five or six new atomic bombs.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency had quoted a former presidential intelligence aide as saying UN-based North Korean diplomats had told US officials the reprocessing had been completed in June at the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex.

"We're not at the stage of being able to confirm anything," President Roh Moo-hyun's foreign policy adviser, Ban Ki-moon, told a meeting of presidential secretaries.

"At present, as we have said, there is no scientific evidence" that Pyongyang had completed reprocessing, he said.

Roh's office released minutes of the meeting.

Reprocessing the 8000 spent nuclear fuel rods would enable North Korea to extract 25-30kg of plutonium -- enough to add five or six bombs to an arsenal US experts estimate already includes one or two such weapons.

The Yonhap report was based on an account of a US-North Korean meeting provided by Chang Sung-min, an intelligence aide to former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, Roh's predecessor.

"North Korean delegates told US officials in an unofficial meeting in New York on July 8 that the reprocessing of spent fuel rods was completed on June 30," Chang was quoted as saying.

Washington and Seoul are trying to draw Pyongyang into talks with South Korea, Japan and China to try to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions. Pyongyang says there must be North Korea-US talks first.

Japan warned North Korea today not to escalate its stand-off with the international community and said it also had no confirmation of the Yonhap report.

The rods were part of a nuclear programme frozen under a 1994 nuclear agreement between North Korea and the United States. The pact fell apart after Washington said last October North Korea had said it had a covert scheme to enrich uranium for bombmaking.

In what some analysts say is a sign North Korea aims to force the United States into bilateral talks, Pyongyang has since made a series of confusing comments about its nuclear activities.

Ban, who said Seoul and Washington were exchanging information on the reprocessing reports, cited recent remarks by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that highlighted the uncertainty about the state of North Korea's reprocessing.

Rumsfeld told the US NBC television programme Meet the Press yesterday: "We do not have good visibility into what they're doing with those rods, and the extent to which they are or are not reprocessing".

Referring to Pyongyang's statements on weapons possession and reprocessing, Rumsfeld said: "Some people believe what they're saying. Other people don't believe what they're saying."

Seoul's intelligence agency told parliament last week it estimated the North had reprocessed some of the rods. On Saturday, Japan's Kyodo news agency cited US sources as saying air samples taken close to Yongbyon had shown traces of krypton 85, a reprocessing by-product.

Analyst Koh Yoo-hwan of Dongkuk University in Seoul said the statements were "North Korea's card to capture the US's attention and force them to the negotiating table".

"Because the US has ignored North Korea, I think the North Koreans are getting a bit impatient," he said.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo discussed North Korea in talks in Manila today. They agreed a multilateral approach was the best way to defuse the crisis over its nuclear programme.

- REUTERS