Advertisement

US: Pakistan aided N. Korea nuke program

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Pakistan was a major supplier of critical equipment for North Korea's newly revealed nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported Friday.

The White House confirmed late Wednesday that North Korea has acknowledged having a secret nuclear weapons program.

Advertisement

"What you have here," said one official familiar with the intelligence, "is a perfect meeting of interests -- the North had what the Pakistanis needed, and the Pakistanis had a way for Kim Jong Il to restart a nuclear program we had stopped." China and Russia were less prominent suppliers, officials said, according to the newspaper report.

The Times report said the equipment supplied to North Korea may include gas centrifuges used to create weapons-grade uranium. The supplies appear to have been part of a deal around 1997 in which Pyongyang gave Pakistan missiles it could use to counter India's nuclear weapons program, officials said according to the report.

A spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy, Asad Hayauddin, told the Times it was "absolutely incorrect" to accuse Pakistan of providing nuclear weapons technology to North Korea. "We have never had an accident or leak or any export of fissile material or nuclear technology or knowledge," he said.

Advertisement

North Korea's admission that it is continuing to pursue nuclear weapons in violation of its 1994 agreement with the United States was "troubling and somber news" and a "serious violation" of non-proliferation accords, the White House said Thursday.

North Korea, when confronted Oct. 2 by a visiting U.S. delegation -- headed by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly -- with the accusation that it had violated its agreement, not only confirmed it was pursuing a nuclear weapons program but also ominously warned it had even "more powerful" weapons -- possibly a reference to chemical and biological ones.

Under the 1994 agreement between North Korea and the United States, North Korea pledged to freeze its Soviet-designed weapons-grade plutonium producing graphite-moderated reactors, in return for a U.S. promise to build safer light-water models for the energy-starved Communist state.

Sandy Berger, former national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, said the original nuclear program objected to by the United States was stopped and not revived. Instead, North Korea apparently instituted a new program.

"It is important that we work very closely with South Korea, Japan and China to confront this issue together," Berger told United Press International. "If the North Koreans want engagement with the rest of the world, they can't have that and a nuclear weapons program at the same time."

Advertisement

In Seoul, officials expressed concern that the North's admission could deal a fatal blow to President Kim Dae-jung's Nobel Peace Prize-wining policy of peaceful engagement with Pyongyang.

"President Kim considers North Korea's nuclear development a very serious matter which cannot be accepted under any circumstances," Yim Sung-joon, a national security adviser, told journalists. Kim will use the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC, summit in Mexico later this month to discuss the North's nuclear weapons program, Yim said.

Latest Headlines