Posted on 05/06/2005 5:37:40 PM PDT by blam
North Korea on brink of first nuclear blast, warn Americans
By Francis Harris in Washington
(Filed: 07/05/2005)
America's spy satellites have detected frenetic activity in North Korea indicating that the secretive Stalinist state is on the verge of detonating a nuclear weapon for the first time.
The preparations include the construction of a reviewing stand that might be used by Pyongyang's leadership to observe a test explosion.
Intelligence officers regard that as highly significant since Kim Jong-il's regime constructed a similar stand seven years ago when it fired a new missile over Japan, an act which triggered a major regional security crisis.
Three United States officials described evidence of extensive tunnelling in the country's north-east in an area called Kilchu, similar to that required for an underground nuclear blast, the New York Times reported. The work was said to resemble the activity associated with Pakistan's nuclear test in 1998.
North Korea is believed to have received advice on its nuclear weapons programme from A Q Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb, who ran a "nuclear supermarket" for would-be atomic states. He visited North Korea repeatedly before the network was broken up by the CIA and MI6.
The activity could not be explained by commercial mining, American officials said. To prepare an underground test site, earth is removed and a nuclear device is placed deep underground before the spoil is reused to seal up the shaft.
The aim is to keep the radioactivity underground. "You see them … taking material back into the mine to plug it up," an official explained. Bush administration officials told the newspaper that it was possible that the activity was designed to fool the Americans, to ratchet up the pressure on them to give ground to the impoverished state in negotiations.
"The North Koreans have learned how to use irrationality as a bargaining tool," a senior source said.
On Thursday, President George W Bush made a lengthy telephone call to Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, during which they discussed North Korea. Washington has also passed the intelligence material to its allies in the region, including Japan and South Korea.
That appeared to explain a hardening of the Japanese position yesterday, when it warned North Korea that, unless it rejoined six party talks on the issue, Tokyo would consider referring the issue to the United Nations Security Council.
Pyongyang, which is seeking to extract economic concessions from the stand-off, withdrew from the talks last year and has given warning that it would regard the imposition of sanctions as a declaration of war.
But yesterday it said officials might return to talks ''if the United States shows trustworthy attitudes and arranges right terms and conditions".
North Korea has become expert at the art of panicking its neighbours and the West.
The country is widely viewed as a crippled and paranoid member of the international community, exporting drugs and missiles to fund a lush lifestyle for its leaders and cash to make nuclear weapons.
More than one million North Koreans are thought to have starved to death in recent years.
Maybe they'll build it just a little too close to the action.
Maybe we can time it and blast them simultaneously with a few nukes of our own and claim the NK's must've had an accident.
Well, there's goes the last four light bulbs.
Any woman could have taught them that.
*ducks*
>pow<
They are either bluffing, with their Potemkin village characteristics;
OR
they are getting ready for the real thing.
Which one of us can really say for sure what those assholes are up to?
We should inform them that any "bluff" will be taken as a serious threat. Give them the "no discussion of eveb the word "bomb" at US airports"-American-style no tolerance treatment. This is the ultimatum we should deliver, IMHO, over this weekend, to the DPRK.
But, being bogged down in Iraq, we can't.
We'll have to go the UN route and whatever pressure China can be goaded into (not much).
I was just thinking the same thing.
If they test, they will test tomorrow. Perfect timing to screw up Pres. Bush's trip to Europe for the 60th anniversary of V.E. Day.
Yup. Hadn't thought of that. Mother's Day too.
Jimmuh's Nobel Peace Prize-winning efforts saw to that.
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